Pieces of Eden
by Lang Noi
Summary: Altair tried to destroy the Piece of Eden at the end of the game. A note for the wise - artifacts of godlike power are rarely defenseless. Now, the master assassin is trapped in Faerun - in a world of conspiracies, magic, and gods.
1. Down the Rabbit Hole

**Chapter One: Down the Rabbit Hole**

**A/N:** There is a list, somewhere, of the list of things you aren't supposed to do.

Even if I have never seen this list, I'm pretty sure what I'm about to do is on it.

Ahem. Presenting my latest (well, relatively) work: Pieces of Eden, an _Assassin's Creed_/_Forgotten Realms_ crossover. Expect an ungodly number of original characters.

* * *

The Piece of Eden, the innocuous silver ball that had left at least a score of men dead at Altaïr's feet, winked to him and shone. It was the world. He could see every mountain and plain across the globe, sparked with pinpricks of light, marking where many of its brethren could be found, if only someone would go and look. The Piece of Eden showed him what could be, if only he weren't so stubborn.

It was telling him to back down. To listen, to watch. To _obey_.

Altaïr clenched his fists. No. He would not obey. He would not allow his will to bend.

The orb and others like it had changed the world. They had changed everything, and in doing so had given power to those who would abuse it. Or perhaps the power had corrupted them instead.

Looking at the globe, then to his former master's corpse, Altaïr thought of the nine Knights Templar he had killed over the last few months and wondered if they had all held the same dream as al-Mualim – to be obeyed. To stamp out free will in all its forms…

Altaïr drew his sword and approached the relic. It began to pulse.

* * *

In retrospect, the mission to Calimport hadn't been a horrible idea, though Oceanus still hated, among other things, the heat, the sand, and about half of the residents. When that idiot bard had described the city as a wretched hive of scum and villainy, he'd been right, even if someone had him killed a week later.

Still, it had been nice of Lumina to send assistance to a temple of Ilmater in such a horrible place. He just wished it hadn't been him.

As a cleric of Bahamut (more or less), Oceanus knew that the two gods' churches were aligned as allies, particularly in the face of foes such as the goddess Loviator and her fellow sadists. He preferred not to associate with any of the Ilmatari because they were so passive. The Martyred One needed to learn, he thought, to fight his own battles.

All the same, Oceanus knew that he would be stuck in Calimport until the month was up, by which point a group from Waterdeep was supposed to take up the slack. The Calimport Ilmatari had suffered losses this past year, mostly due to overactive crime lords disliking the idea of their foes getting free healing at any decent temple. Out of all the goodly churches in and around Calimport, only the temple of Ilmater would not fight back.

Oceanus, upon being told of this by the high priest of the Ilmatari, had decided to make things more difficult for the native criminals of Calimport. Just last week he had dropped a ceramic roofing tile onto the head of one of the Basadoni Guild's enforcers, probably putting the man out for a few days. Given that he disliked most of the hired swords in the city, it was something he probably would have ended up doing anyway. It helped keep his spirits up.

If there was one thing that Oceanus despised above all else in the city, it was that no one cared at all of what happened to the poor. A man could be born, grow old, and die on the same street, and the only thing his neighbors would care about was looting the abandoned hut. The higher classes wouldn't notice to begin with.

Then there were the extensive "punishments" inflicted on anyone who angered the various crime lords. The older guilds were particularly creative on this point. Before venturing into the kingdom of Calimshan for the first time as a callow (or stupid) youth many years ago, he had never seen a man's body broken so extensively. Now he saw it every day, as the beggars and street folk came to the charity hospital the Ilmatari called a temple.

Now, though, his turn on the healing rotation was over. Gesturing for one of the acolytes to take his last patient of the night, a street child with a stomach so distended it looked like he'd been force-fed a melon, Oceanus sighed. With any luck his patient would survive, but he didn't feel optimistic about the boy's prospects. Oceanus had never been more than a passable healer, having never practiced the arts before coming, but now he wished he was.

Having had his fill of the day's depressing stories, Oceanus retreated to his bedroom – an old storeroom he had modified with a window – and went to the desk. On it were some of the few possessions he had managed to bring this far south, as well as a few sheets of coarse paper, a quill, and an inkwell. The stub of a candle burned cheerfully through the gloom as he sat down and began to write:

_Gorri – son of Halil, merchant on the main road, attacked by "The Heart." Dead on arrival – thirteen stab wounds, one missing heart. Claimed by the family._

_Yazmik – orphan, street thief, suffering from worms. Given potion – will recover._

_Indi – orphan, beggar, pregnant. May stay full term._

_Gag – old beggar, bone aches. Given potion – will likely return in a few days._

_Jornil – unknown, probably orphaned beggar. Treated for worms and internal bleeding, may be too la_

And he stopped, because he heard a pebble bounce off of the window shutters he had installed. Crawling over his bed, he opened the window and there was a face, peering at him with a grin that made him want to punch it off. It would have been easier if the man hadn't been looking at him from his place on the ledge above the window, making his head seem upside-down.

"You again." Oceanus said flatly, one eyebrow coming up in disdain. "What is it now?"

Dog Perry, the arrogant up-and-coming assassin that he was, just grinned wider. "Tell me, is that all you have to say to an old friend? I was just stopping by to see you."

The priest sat back. "If by "old friend" you mean "you attempted to kill me because my best friend humiliated you a few months ago and yet, somehow you failed," then yes, I am an old friend." Oceanus said.

Dog Perry's grin turned into a scowl. "I come in peace, overconfident priest. I only wish to see your well-kept patient records."

"Why is that?" Oceanus couldn't keep the boredom out of his voice. Dog Perry was an arrogant upstart, a rat preying on the common mice while the cat was away. There seemed to be more and more of the creatures every day, eager to prove their worth and crawl out of the shadow belonging to Artemis Entreri, who had not been seen in years.

"Surely you would not want me to become upset, priest?" Dog Perry said. "There are whispers that I did not fulfill my contract on the merchant. You must confirm my kill."

Oceanus made a show of thinking about it. In reality, he wanted nothing more than for the idiot to get caught and killed in one of his own webs of deceit. Dog Perry was far from an efficient killer, and missed about as often as he killed. His guild could easily do away with him.

Thinking back on this an hour or so later, Oceanus would kick himself for even wishing such a thing on anyone. No one deserved the wrath of a slighted guildmaster.

"Here." Oceanus said with a grumble, ripping a slip of paper off of the one he had been writing on, the bit with the merchant's name, and handed it to the man. "Just take the damn thing back to Quentin and stop bothering me."

Dog Perry saluted. "Of course, dear priest." Then he disappeared into the darkening night, leaving Oceanus to wonder why he kept letting the assassin ask favors when it was clear the man was just trying to see if he could be ordered about.

"I need to stop doing this." Oceanus said to himself, but he knew that until Dog Perry was sent to kill him or any of the Ilmatari, he'd probably keep ceding to the assassin's demands. He sighed. He had lost his spine somewhere around Memnon. There was no other reason why he kept giving money to beggars when they were just going to spend it on alcohol, or continued to heal the victims of Calimport's underbelly when it would make more sense just to kill the ones responsible.

He glanced at the desk again. A pair of short, stout ceramic bottles stood to the rear, marking the supply of healing potions he had left for the journey home. The candle stub was practically swimming in its own wax, but with its light he could clearly see the heavy star-embossed medallion he used in his more dangerous spells, as well as the little silver locket he had left there to protect it from thieving hands. He didn't dare open it again, not after the breakdown it had caused on his first night here.

Not nearly for the first time, Oceanus felt homesick.

He sat back on his bed, trying not to think of the valley he had settled down in, of the friends he'd been forced to leave behind in the northlands. As soon as the Waterdhavian Ilmatari could make it to their brethren's defense, he would go home as fast as he could. Though he was loath to admit it, the Calishites could take care of their own problems. Better that they did and left him out of it.

It was at about this point that there was a horrendous ripping sound. Blue light shone from a jagged tear in the ceiling, but what was on the other side seemed to be some sort of building…

Oceanus realized that he was looking at a wizard's door, or at least a horribly corrupted version of it. He stood up and scooted around the ragged shaft of light, moving toward the door to call for some sort of help, before remembering that he had let Ash go off to stalk wererats in the sewers. None of the priests were fighters in any sense of the word, and without his gigantic canine pet, Oceanus had a bad feeling that he was at a disadvantage no matter _what_ came out.

He was wrong, because about a second after that thought something did come out. It seemed to be mostly white; probably a man in a robe. It hit the top of his desk to the sound of shattering potion bottles, and then rolled off and onto the floor.

Oceanus stood stock-still for a moment. Then he stuck his head out the door and screamed for an acolyte, right before rushing over to the man and trying to figure out how to get the pottery shards out of him.

Something glowing and silver _plunk_ed to the floor next to him. It went ignored.

* * *

Trapped. He felt like he was drowning in a sea of limitless, blinding, suffocating mist. No matter how he struggled, he could never make any appreciable progress, and all the while the shadows closed in, laughing and taunting. Something jerked inside of him; suddenly the shadows screamed and fled, and he could see clearly again.

Altaïr woke to a voice, and to the sense of being flattened. Something warm and _very_ heavy was lying across his stomach and both of his arms. Whatever it was weighed more than he did, or anything he could think of short of a horse.

His right arm felt like it was on fire – something had moved and it felt like prodding at an open wound. "…there. That seems to be the last of them." It was a soft voice, edged with relief. Altaïr couldn't place the accent as other than "not native."

"Arf," said the thing sprawled across him. _A dog?_

"You can get off him now. I think I can handle it." There was a shuffling noise. The heavy, furry animal stood and Altaïr felt the mattress sag under its weight. The beast sauntered off as the first voice spoke again, "Aril?"

"Yes?" said the another voice, this one with a very familiar accent. Imperceptibly, Altaïr relaxed a little. He was, if not among friends, at least somewhere he could probably travel back to the Brotherhood _from_. The name didn't exactly ring a bell, though.

"Fetch me a healing potion, would you? The ones I had were all smashed."

"Of course. From which shop?"

"There is more than one?"

"Certainly. But for these wounds, I think I know what you need. It will only take a few minutes—"

"Ah, excellent."

"—and some silver, of course."

There was a long pause. "You would make an exceptional merchant if you ever decided priesthood was not worth it." There was a jingling noise as a few coins changed hands.

"Very true, sir." Altaïr heard the other man leave, and a door far off being opened.

"Now then…" began the first voice after a long moment. Altaïr heard the dog-beast return and begin walking around the table. "When are _you_ going to stop pretending to be asleep?"

Well, that was about as overt of a hint Altaïr thought he'd ever gotten. He rolled over and sat up, his legs dangling off of the raised mattress.

Looking at his possible opponent, Altaïr realized that he was perhaps giving too much credit. The owner of the first voice was probably too young to hold the authority she obviously commanded. She was small, probably half a foot shorter than Altaïr was, and the lower part of her face was obscured by a heavy scarf. She wore a scholar or a priest's robes, with the hood pulled up so her hair color was impossible to distinguish, but Altaïr could see metal glinting off her wrists and ankles. A fighter, then, like Maria.

"My weapons?" Altaïr asked after a short staring contest as they sized each other up.

The young woman gestured to a table off to the side, where Altaïr saw his scimitar, short blade, and pouch with throwing knives. A quick twitch of his left arm confirmed that his hidden blade was still equipped.

As he looked at the blades, however, something massive moved between the bed and the table.

Altaïr didn't think he'd ever seen such a large beast. It was obviously canine, but only just. It was covered in white fur except for the saddle-like patch on its back and the way its white tail darkened toward the end. The creature itself was longer than a man was tall, with its tail's length to double that. Worse, the long tail ended in a bone-colored, hooklike protrusion Altaïr would generously call a blade.

"I make a point of not trusting assassins," she told him. There was a bit of a pause, then, "Though, you are the first to try entering my room using a wizard's door."

_Wizard's door_? Altaïr wondered. "Explain," he demanded.

She gave Altaïr a disbelieving look. "Explain?" he repeated. "_Explain_? You dropped into my room from some place unknown, carrying more weapons than a crazed mass-murderer and you want _me_ to explain? I want to know why you—Ash?"

Altaïr glanced at the doglike beast when he heard it give a short, sharp bark. It was staring at the young woman with a look the assassin recognized as stern disapproval. Or at least something like it – it was hard to tell with animals.

"…Overreaction, right." The woman gave a sigh and shook her head. "I apologize. I think I have been dealing with assassins for too long."

If Altaïr had been anyone else, or at least been in a better mood, he would have been more interested in the exchange. Not today, with his head pounding and his arm feeling like it was going to catch fire. Glancing at the wound, he noticed that someone had pulled his sleeve up and had been halfway to bandaging it. "Was this your doing?" Altaïr asked, indicating the angry-looking cuts. None of them seemed that deep.

She nodded. "Yes. I was planning on finishing before you woke."

At that moment, as they stared at each other uneasily, the dog leapt back onto the bed and, though Altaïr jumped away instinctively, curled around the spot where he would have been. The dog gave him a mournful look, then just as quickly dismissed him and settled its head on its paws.

"You have never seen an animal like him?" the green-eyed woman asked. She approached cautiously, but Altaïr realized that Oceanus had taken the dog's action to mean that the assassin was, if not trustworthy, then at least not trying to kill her. Which was true, Altaïr had to admit. He didn't plan on killing the woman, mostly due to not having any idea of what to do next. Besides that, he would rather not kill any woman, period, not matter how rude. "This is Ash. He is a friend."

"I can see that." Altaïr said, a little more sharply than intended. It was becoming slowly, painfully clear that he was deeply out of his depth and nowhere near home.

The young woman glanced at him curiously – apparently, Altaïr had been downgraded from "threat" to "mystery" – and said, "Who are you?"

"Altaïr ibn La-Ahad." Altaïr replied, pulling his hood back up and clumsily trying to wind the remaining bandages around his exposed upper arm, even though he was not left-handed and had little experience with medicine in any case. He still felt rather off-balance, and probably more than a little cross. After a while, the green-eyed woman sighed and forced the assassin's fingers away, determined to fix this on her own.

"Well met, Altaïr," she said as he wound the linen around the wound. "I am Oceanus Winterheart, the one whose room you landed in and whose potions you shattered."

_Wait, "Oceanus"?_ Wasn't that a male name? Then, there was a chance that... He roughly pushed the thought aside. "Where am I?"

"In the temple of the god of mercy, Ilmater," the priest (_er, -ess? Something like that..._) said. "I am a priest of the god Bahamut, here on sabbatical." That solved that mystery, then, unless Oceanus was actually a woman playing at being a man like Maria had, but for some other reason. Altaïr would fully admit (inwardly) that he wasn't thinking very well.

Altaïr sighed and tried to think through the fuzzy, stunned mess that was his mind at the moment. "Have you ever heard of Jerusalem?" he asked after a moment, trying the name of the most famous city he knew of.

Oceanus asked without looking up, "Is that some kind of plant?"

"No. It is a great city in the desert, in Palestine."

"Never. The only great desert cities here are Calimport and Memnon, and I would have heard of any others." Oceanus said flatly. "Have you ever heard of _them_?"

"No." Altaïr admitted. He would not admit, though, that the reason he had never heard of them was because he had no idea where he was in relation to home.

Oceanus blew out a frustrated sigh. "Did you live under a rock before coming here? This _is _Calimport, the capital city of the kingdom of Calimshan. It's the largest city in the world. How could you miss it?"

Altaïr said nothing. He stayed silent as Oceanus fussed and generally carried on like a put-upon woman, thinking. Something was terribly wrong here.

* * *

It was almost painfully clear that the man was confused, Oceanus realized once he'd managed to stamp down on his temper (which took a while; as far as he was concerned, he was perfectly within his rights to panic if someone suddenly showed up in his bedroom). While clearly a fighter, he carried no enchanted weapons, and Oceanus had a strong suspicion that the style of robes he wore had been out of style in Calimshan for centuries. Every detail indicated a distinct not-from-here vibe.

Despite that, though, the man was clearly Calishite from his face and skin tone. Even his build, minus perhaps the fact that he seemed to be in top physical form, was obviously native to the Calishite people. For Oceanus, that just meant he had a mystery on his hands. "Mystery" often translated into "headache."

As for the name, it didn't sound like any of the local names he had heard over his month here. The fact was, there wasn't really a Calishite naming scheme, at least not compared to the northern countries. After running into, variously, Dog Perry, Quentin Bodeau, Artemis Entreri, Sharlotta Vespers, and even the Pasha of the Basadoni guild, he had long since given up finding a pattern.

Thinking it over as he waited for Aril to show up, he realized belatedly that in the basic language of Calimshan, which most people didn't bother to learn because the common tongue of Waterdeep was the main trading language, Altaïr ibn La-Ahad translated to, roughly, "Eagle Son of No-One."

After a while longer, as he wondered if Aril had been robbed or killed, he sighed. He'd just have to stay put. If he left, one of the others would probably decide he'd gone missing and then leave to look for him, and so on. While he was certain that Calimport held nothing that could be a real threat to him, the same could not be said regarding his fellow priests.

He sighed again just from thinking about it. Sometimes he felt like a nanny.

Altaïr stood off to the side of the room, just far enough out of the way that someone wouldn't trip over him, but at least visible. Oceanus got the unpleasant feeling that Altaïr knew more about the art of disappearing that he did.

While Oceanus had been binding Altaïr's wounds, Ash had gone off somewhere. Oceanus rarely thought about where his furry companion went to when he wasn't looking, figuring that if he heard screaming he'd be on the right track. The dog-creature had a bit of a reputation in Calimport's underbelly, mostly for being a Beast That Stalks the Night. Oceanus didn't really mind.

Still, though he never worried for Ash's safety, he _did_ sort of wonder where he could have gone. After all, Ash had seen the entire upper floor many times before and had never been all that interested in it unless Oceanus was going to upstairs to sleep and Ash felt like being a bed-warmer. Oceanus had a sneaking suspicion that it had something to do with the fact that there was no food to beg off of people up there.

Ash finally decided to make his appearance, his claws clicking on the stone steps as he meandered down. Oceanus glanced at his companion and saw him trot over to Altaïr, holding something silver and glowing in his jaws.

"What is that?" Oceanus asked as Altaïr took the glowing object from Ash's mouth.

Altaïr gave it a good look, wiping some of the dog's drool off of it, and tucked it into his hip pouch without a word. Oceanus heard his breath hitch, though, and wondered why that was.

* * *

It had followed him.

It had _followed_ him.

Altaïr went up to the room Oceanus had lent him, with his thoughts spinning wildly out of control. The Piece of Eden made everything so much more complicated, only by existing.

Altaïr sat on the bed, turning the innocent-looking silver orb over in his hands as he thought. Temptation-incarnate, the Piece of Eden had a long history. All of it involved either miracles or slaughter, or possibly both in unbelievable proportions. All of it ended in madness and death.

He wondered if al-Mualim had understood. If he had understood the depths of the item, the silver-tongued nature of sin and how the Piece of Eden threw the doors wide open for them. Or had that urge, the urge to take free will from all of mankind, been part of al-Mualim and the rest of the Templars all along?

Did they even understand what that would mean? Altaïr had been taught almost from birth to see the truth, no matter how depraved or brilliant, just as all of the assassins had been. Then why had only five of them, counting Malik, been able to resist? Altaïr was stubborn and remembered dozens of masters over the years trying to teach him obedience, too, but maybe that was where the plan had fallen short. His master had wanted to use him as a killing tool, but that had fallen flat in the face of his will.

Indomitable will. Unshakeable faith.

Impervious mind.

He sighed. Leaning back on Oceanus's bed, he turned the orb over again.

He wasn't sure if the orb actually had a mind of its own – it seemed to him to be just a weapon, another tool – but there was always the chance that artifacts so old that myths had been spun from them were more than what they appeared to be. Then there was the fact that, among the people who knew of the Pieces of Eden, there seemed to be an insatiable urge to claim it as their own. Briefly, Altaïr wondered if it would attract more coveters, perhaps ones too powerful for him to fend off.

The Piece of Eden sparkled innocently in the moonlight. It made a mockery of everything human strength stood for, just by existing. He had wanted so badly to destroy it and had failed. He even remembered the exact moment when his blade had touched its flawless surface, right before the world had become a dark blur and he had woken up to a grumpy busybody of a priest trying to "fix" him.

And now what? With any luck at all he'd be able to hide the Piece of Eden, take it out of the game. But without any Masayf, any stronghold to bury it under, the desert was the second-best choice. Despite the fact that every modicum of training and common sense he had ever gained over the years screaming at him, despite the fact that he was still injured, the idea of the Piece of Eden having free reign in any city was utterly repulsive. The desert would take it and hide it forever.

Turning the memories over in his mind, he only noticed the passing of time as the moon began to drift to the other side of the sky. After that, he stared fixedly at the ceiling as he spent many minutes trying to gather and place his wildly-spinning thoughts.

With a grunt, he drifted back to reality as soon as he heard footsteps outside the door. The person creeping around was skilled – he was walking mostly on the nail-heads to avoid making much sound – but Altaïr had long since learned to train his senses far belong any normal human limits.

The knock came eventually. It was Oceanus. "Altaïr? You need to get out here. We have to leave."

Altaïr crossed the tiny room in two quick strides and opened the door. Looking down a little, he recognized the priest after a moment. He had changed clothes completely and now looked like a common street thief in black and brown, with a scarf tied tight around his head. His eyes, however, were the same, right down to the stare that seemed designed to burn through solid rock.

Altaïr didn't blink. "Why is that?"

"All of the Ilmatari have been ordered to leave the city, on pain of death, before dawn." Oceanus said in a clipped tone. "That includes me, and you if you plan on living."

Altaïr bristled. If there was one thing he couldn't stand besides Abbas's condescending attitude, it was being threatened. His right hand itched with the temptation to use the hidden blade, but it only lasted a moment.

"Someone did something rash." Oceanus said shortly. "I have no idea what the Ilmatari have done to anger the thieves' guilds like this, but this is their order, and they have many ways of enforcing it." The priest made an expansive gesture. "The walls have more eyes than you can imagine. They already know you are here, even if they know less about you than I do, and that is very little indeed."

Altaïr was struck by the image of Talal, briefly. Organized criminals? Why would a young priest even know about this sort of thing?

"The Ilmatari depend on you as a bodyguard," the assassin said after a moment. He should have seen it earlier – Oceanus moved like a slighter, younger version of an assassin. It wasn't obvious at first glance, and Altaïr's Eagle Vision hadn't registered him as a threat but…he was dangerous. The experienced sort, not the kind that went off to do stupid things that got entire squads killed.

Oceanus gave a jerky nod. "None of them are fighters like you and I are. I…" He glanced down the hall and Altaïr looked over his head to where Ash was helping an elderly priest or patient down the hallway. "They are too slow, or infirm, to escape in time. I need to buy them more time, but I will not be able to hold off the early killers for long enough."

At least he admits it, Altaïr thought. "You want me to help."

"Yes. If Ash guards the Ilmatari as they flee to the docks, we may be able to hold off the remainder of the men the guilds will send."

Well, he definitely wasn't going to admit that this made his life much easier. Getting out of the city would probably limit the Piece of Eden's influence.

Oceanus seemed to deflate a little the longer Altaïr stayed silent. After a while, he said in a voice so quiet Altaïr almost didn't hear, "Please?"

Altaïr didn't have to think too hard on that one. He nodded.

"Good. I will explain as much as I can as we go." Oceanus said, and in one blur of movement the priest was suddenly perched on the windowsill. Altaïr could see at least six knife hilts as Oceanus turned to face him, gave him a smirk, and dropped out of sight.

Altaïr followed a moment later. He knew that this sort of beginning always led to someone ending up dead. And Altaïr knew where he stood with dead people.

Namely, upright, holding a bloody eagle feather in his hand.

* * *

**A/N:** Edited.

Anyway, for reference, Oceanus is about 5'1", weighs about a third less than a normal man, and looks and sounds enough like a woman to confuse everyone who's meeting him for the first time. He looks like a teenager, which is why Altaïr commented on it.

Also, Altair is about 5'8" (I think - he doesn't seem much taller than most people in the game), normal weight and build, and is 25 years old according to the Assassin's Creed wiki. So he doesn't exactly have much room to talk.

ALSO, to whoever keeps saying "more please," give me an idea instead of just demanding another update. I even have it listed in my bio as a personal pet-peeve, so if you don't have anything useful to say one way or another, don't bother.


	2. Through The Looking Glass

**Chapter Two: Through the Looking Glass**

**A/N:** What in heck am I doing…?

(should be studying or something)

Oh well…

* * *

He caught the scent of blood at the same time Ash did. He realized, distantly, that Altaïr walked up the stairs at some point but couldn't remember the moment all that well after Ash started growling. After the man had disappeared, he gave a full-body twitch and shook his head violently. He had other things to worry about than an assassin who had told him only his name.

The priest walked over to a closet next to the rear door and opened it. Piles upon piles of ancient, discarded, or otherwise useless weapons clogged the little space there was inside, except for one. Standing on a pile of shields because he was too small to reach the rack otherwise, Oceanus carefully removed a gleaming, viciously spiked mace from the wall.

His nod to Ilmater's ban of blades, this weapon was made of steel, mithral, more than a little divine magic from three different gods, and was nearly indestructible. Due to his own slight stature and dependence on speed, he didn't like using such heavy weapons, but as long as he was stationed in Calimport with the Ilmatari he supposed he needed to fit in. Now it was time to confirm his suspicions.

Whistling a three-note tune to call Ash to his side, Oceanus bade the priest at the door good-night and walked out into the deadly streets with his deadly mace bouncing on his shoulder.

He found Aril in a back alley. The man's glassy eyes stared sightlessly upward, even with his face twisted in a mask of fear that would stay with him in death. Oceanus didn't have to touch his fellow priests' skin to know he had died less than ten minutes ago. As soon as he had suspected Aril had been killed, he had known it would have had to be a guild killing.

He was never afraid of walking alone. There had been a point, once, when he would have hidden in the shadows like a little thief in the night for fear of being spotted (by whom, not even he knew). Now he didn't care.

He took a turn into the poor district, pointedly ignoring the shadows that had their eyes trained on him. With Ash at his side there was no point in hiding who he was.

There would be few real beggars along this road. Half the children in the district were in fact furry-footed halflings in disguise, while the other half worked for the same guild masters anyway. And if a traveler looked hard enough, he'd realize that many of the supposed one-legged wretches along the side of the road in fact did have both legs, but one bound tight to the thigh.

Oceanus pushed past one such guild sentry with hardly a glance. The man didn't try to grab at him, not with Ash's long, strong teeth so close to his face. He remembered where this guild's entrance was – Pasha Pook had barely hidden the damn thing while he was alive and his third successor, Pasha Bodeau, had hardly done any better – and it only took one good rap to summon the doorman.

The man winced when he saw Oceanus there – good, the man's memory was still intact. He probably remembered the last time the green-eyed priest had arrived, many years ago, on a mission to track and put down a killer that had once been employed by Pook. He had not been very subtle then – Lumina had made it very clear that the man had killed an entire family of Calishite immigrants in her valley, before being chased out of town by her lieutenants – and their fight had taken out two rooms and an antechamber before Oceanus had managed to embed a knife in the killer's throat. Lumina had not sent him on any more search-and-destroy missions since, giving him an odd look and muttering something about wounds in the head.

Of course Pasha Pook had not been happy, but he had been killed a few years later so it wasn't as if it mattered anyway.

"I seek an audience with LaValle." Oceanus said quietly, naming the guild's wizard. The man was old, and had only survived to be so through his easy way of switching allegiances to whichever pasha had the most power. If Bodeau died tomorrow, he would become the successor's right-hand-man in less than a day.

The doorman nodded nervously and stood aside. Ash gave the man a nip as they entered the guildhouse, sending the man jumping back in fear. Oceanus gave his furry companion a glare until the white beast sat down with a whine, his hooked tail flicking this way and that.

"Quickly." Oceanus ordered, in that same quiet, firm tone that would not allow the man to disobey. He watched as the footman disappeared and sighed to himself.

The footman did not reappear, but again Ash growled and he picked up the coppery scent of blood.

"What did I just do, Ash?" he asked, though he didn't expect the beast to answer in any sense of the world. "Gods…" What in the Nine Hells was in that other room? "Ash…"

The beast moved forward, snarling, as the door opened.

Until this month, the priest had not visited Calimport since the early days of his childhood. He had, in fact, made every effort to not come back at all, given how many things he hated about the city.

But even if it had been years upon years since he had last set foot in the desert city, his friend Keras went back routinely.

He knew exactly who he faced now.

All of Ash's fur stood on end as Oceanus and Artemis Entreri locked gazes.

* * *

Oceanus had been taught at a young age that the slow ones didn't last very long when the going got tough. If you were slow, you died.

He made it a point to be, if not the fast one, then at least faster than the resident meat shield who called himself a warrior. He had been on far too many missions with idiots to ever consider retreat a shameful thing.

Calimport was not a city designed for walking. It had no main lane, no paved streets, and a drainage system that was best described as "practically nonexistent." Therefore, anyone who wanted to get anywhere in the city would have to travel through the second street – the rooftops.

This was not to say that most of the roofs were suitable for climbing. Most of them were shanties anyway, and could have blown over in a strong wind if Calimport had storms, but the few stone homes were usually sturdy enough to have a footrace on. Well, provided the competitors were good jumpers, since the distance from the palace accurately predicted how fragile the structures were.

It was one of those things that made him wish he was at home again, where the only thing he had to worry about was getting sent out on a mission again.

Oceanus had never been particularly suited to city life, much preferring to get as far away as he could from large numbers of people in the mountains or on the high seas, but he had learned how to escape almost anything on two legs even in this environment.

He was still a little surprised Altaïr could keep up.

In fact… Oceanus looked back at the hooded man and felt something odd. It wasn't one of those feelings you could shake – sort of like the sense that someone was watching, and Altaïr could follow him even in perfect darkness… but then, nearly every species that had survived in Calimport for more than a generation developed some degree of night vision anyway. Still… Oceanus managed to push the thought to the back of his mind by watching the rooftops and streets as they went.

The city was alive, with little darting shadows on dozens of street corners and even more rooftop gardens and shacks. Oceanus could see all of them easily by the light of the bright silver moon. None of them were making any real effort to hide themselves – most of them probably didn't think that anyone would be watching with any sort of malicious intent.

Oceanus, at the moment, was more or less up to his eyeballs in highly-concentrated and controlled wrath. He was practically running on it.

Though he would never admit it out loud, he had spent most of his life like that and operating on a hair-trigger was business as usual for him.

Altaïr had grudgingly agreed to the plan, which was a stroke of luck. He hadn't explained everything, mostly because there hadn't been time, which meant that Altaïr was putting his faith in a priest he had only known for a few hours.

Sometimes, Oceanus wondered at the human capacity for…well, he wasn't going to say gullibility, mostly because he was going to hold up his end of the plan with knives if he had to, but he couldn't come up with another word.

Trust, that was the thing. It was something Oceanus had always had trouble with, except around people he cared about more than life itself. Altaïr hadn't made that list so far.

He and Altaïr jumped down from a stack of shipping crates nearly two stories high, landing silently in the bazaar closest to the docks. The Ilmatari would be using the sewers instead, but none of the would-be killers would know that, and if they did (like the wererats would almost immediately), Ash would have already solved the problem. They stuck to the shadows for a while, watching the alleys and roofs, before each man peeled away from the wall and headed in opposite directions.

They met up later on a rooftop, with the smaller of the two carrying a large sack of something very heavy. He gave Altaïr a glare that said very clearly that he was not allowed to ask questions and stowed the sack in the shadow of a rooftop garden. Waving him off, the priest indicated the alley across the way for the first part of their plan. Altaïr nodded and disappeared.

Then Oceanus waved a hand over the sack, causing it to glow faintly green. As it faded, he pulled out the little lengths of steel he called throwing knives and began to aim for any of the approaching killers stupid enough to move.

* * *

Everything Altaïr could remember, every kill he had ever made, had really been a game of cat-and-mouse played on rooftops rather than in cellar corners. He excelled at both roles, though it would make more literal sense if the analogy included guard dogs somewhere.

He had never been the bait before.

This is stupid, Altaïr thought. And if Malik had been there, he probably would have said the same thing, but with more biting sarcasm and considerably less patience with the whole situation.

As Oceanus had said, though, he did look more like one of the Ilmatari than the little priest did. Not by race, because there was just no compensating for that, but by clothing. All he had to do was bring his hands together as if in prayer, and then the vultures would pounce.

Now, he had done this part before, but with considerably less risk because being a member of the clergy was _safe_ in every city he had been in until now. Also, at Oceanus's insistence, he had removed all of his weapons aside from his short sword and hidden blade, which the priest couldn't have taken off with a pry bar at the moment. There was something comforting about having a second line of defense if the enemy did turn out to be as good at fighting as Oceanus had hinted.

He heard the heard coins tinkling on the stones just before he saw a man come into view, blades drawn.

Altaïr didn't know who the man was. If he had, he might have held the charade for slightly longer than he did. By the time he had changed his posture to something that could graciously be called a pre-attack position, the man had charged.

That was about when Altaïr found himself at a lethal disadvantage.

The man was _fast_. It was the sort of speed you just didn't see among the heavily-armored Knights Templar or their comrades. In fact, Altaïr thought as he deflected a slash at his shoulder with difficulty, you didn't see this sort of skill among the Brotherhood, either.

He wielded one long, curved sword along with a dagger in his off hand. It would have been dazzling in any other situation, but since Altaïr had a certain fondness for being upright and breathing, he concentrated on avoiding having his lungs punctured or his hands taken off.

Two-handed fighting. Well, that was a new one, Altaïr thought, as the man's strike sent a shudder up his short sword. As a new cut opened up on his right bicep, he worked his sword arm furiously to keep off the man's long blade. He would probably have been dead a while ago if he had tried to fight the man with the same weapons. Only the short blade's lighter weight kept him from being slashed to death in a dozen interesting ways.

Altaïr noticed after a moment that the man was trying to force his blade up higher. Well, that wasn't going to happen – he didn't have the range to spare, and he knew that the stab-to-the-gut bit came right after your opponent was stupid enough to hold his weapons over his head, and therefore leave his stomach open. Or, if you didn't have any patience (like Altaïr) go for the knees.

His foot snapped forward. The thick leather deflected the glancing blow from the man's longer sword and he scored a direct on the man's leg and threw him off-balance. He didn't have a chance to act on it, though.

Even as the man jerked back, his dagger nicked Altaïr's leading leg as he shoved the man's longer sword almost back into his face, drawing a long line of blood. More than the wound itself, however, it felt like a steel file being dragged across his soul and the white-robed assassin faltered for an instant, his inner Eagle screaming. _What sorcery—?_

Then his opponent surged back and he wasn't allowed to think about it.

Altaïr parried the man's attacks as they came. He couldn't hear anything over the ring of steel. He wouldn't _let_ anything else come into play. Don't let yourself think. Let yourself think after, if there is an after, because if you wonder about _anything_ during a swordfight, you'll be able to play a Greek shepherd song with your guts in less than ten seconds.

Altaïr found himself backing away inch by inch, even with his sword arm working almost as fast as he could to deflect the man's strikes. His left arm was close to useless – the hidden blade wasn't strong enough to take a direct blow from anything and it would be too difficult to draw his longer sword from that angle, even if he had ever trained for such a thing. He couldn't fight two-handed, despite the hidden blade's surprise factor.

Altaïr's blade glanced off the man's right hand, drawing blood and a growl from him. Not enough, not enough…

As the white-robed assassin's back heel hit the stone wall, something dark and flailing furiously was heaved over the wall of a building and very nearly landed on his opponent. He heard shouting from both parties.

Altaïr seized the opportunity. With a speed he reserved for the escape after a kill, he charged and, bouncing off an empty crate to gain height, vaulted over his enemy's head and hit the ground running. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears as he skidded around the corner, and meeting Oceanus while he was coming off a roof, took off for the next section of the city.

* * *

"We are not doing that again." Altaïr told Oceanus five minutes later, in the area known mostly for guild houses rather than slums. But then, most of the city was one big slum anyway, so the point was slightly moot.

Oceanus, still panting, snapped, "Of course not. Do you even know who that was?"

"No." Altaïr said. He seemed to be saying that a lot lately.

"That was _Artemis Entreri_!" Oceanus growled. "The king of assassins! You are lucky to have survived meeting him at all!"

Altaïr gave him a look that had evidence of a certain smugness that Oceanus despised in people. It reminded him of the stupid young men he had once known who would brag about surviving a dragon attack or orc raid or something, when it was usually more important to remember that the only reasons anyone lived through that sort of thing was by divine favor, and it wasn't going to happen twice. And it hadn't.

Still… "Nevertheless." Oceanus honestly couldn't think of anything to yell at the man for, at the moment. He'd lived. That was enough.

"What did you drop over the roof?" Altaïr asked after a moment.

"Dog Perry, a guild enforcer for Pasha Bodeau," the priest said. "He decided to ask me where Entreri was right when you got into a fight with him. I…er…I helped him find his man."

"Convenient." Altaïr remarked.

Oceanus rolled his eyes and sighed. "Yes, that was luck. Now, can we get on with this foolishness before Entreri comes looking for the one that got away?"

Altaïr shrugged. Oceanus sighed again and led the way to the next defensible point.

* * *

Ash sat on the docks with the host of priests and Calishites who had decided to come along for the ride, waiting. After a moment he began to scratch his ear with his back leg, yawning at the same time. The escape ship was later than had been agreed, and Ash could smell the humans' nervousness spreading. Their voices began to grow louder as more and more pockets of whispering sprang up.

He scratched again at the harness setup his master had made him wear. He didn't mind carrying his master's things, not really, but the leather felt strange on top of his fur. He rolled over with a noise that sounded like "clank," from his master's mace and his armor hitting each other. The humans jumped violently at the sound before looking around at each other shamefacedly.

Ash, who was neither stupid nor a "good doggie," found this all very silly. If it weren't for the fact that he had been born with a canine mouth, he probably would have been talking, but since he hadn't, he settled for whining. Humans were so worried about things. Ash, who had been raised for absolute loyalty and unerring faith, didn't doubt that the escape ship would come. He never doubted anything when his master said it was so.

Sure enough, he smelled the heavy, flowery scent even through the sharp and salty air. Ignoring the humans for a moment, he followed his nose until he was pointed directly at a dark shape on the water. Then someone small and warm gripped the white ruff of fur around his neck, and he rubbed his big face against hers.

"Doggie," the little girl said in her thick Calishite accent. Ash licked her face. She giggled and hugged him.

Nonetheless, he was aware of the ship drifting still closer, its main sails furled to avoid detection. He whined.

He was not disappointed when the gangplank slammed down on the dock. A cloud of warm, pink scents descended and it took a while for Ash's eyes to catch up with his nose. By that point, a brown hand with four jeweled rings had already begun patting his white head.

"Good boy," she said.

The woman was not very tall, not even by Calishite standards, but she was healthy and strong. She wore expensive clothes made of silk and fine linen, all dyed red and pink and sweet-smelling to Ash's nose. She was darker than his master, but her eyes were brighter – a sort of pretty blue-green better suited for gemstones than for human faces. Her smile was hidden behind a veil weighed down by garnets that also glittered from a tiara on her head. Everything about her screamed of wealth, power, or both.

Ash whined again as the crowd behind him began to stir, apparently having gotten over their initial shock.

She stood up straight and began to shout. "All right, you lot! Everyone get on board right now!" She seemed bigger than she really was when she did that. Her eyes even seemed to glow in the moonlight.

The humans did as they were told, too scared to make a move against her. Still, the little girl who had her hand in Ash's fur spoke up anyway. "Who are you?"

The woman looked down at her as if she was surprised anyone had spoken. Then she smiled again; it was always easy to tell when she smiled, when she was happy. When she was happy, nothing burned. Ash didn't like fire much, so he liked it when she was happy.

"My name is Zahara, miss," she said gently, "the ship's sorceress and captain."

"Will you take us to some new place? A safe place?" the girl asked, stretching out one hand, which Zahara accepted. She released Ash's fur, and he sat there looking mournful while the sorceress fell into her motherly role again. He liked children, but she hadn't had any since her twins had grown up. Ash remembered hearing his master talk about them.

Zahara nodded, picking the little girl up. "Say goodbye to the doggie now, miss. He has to go home now."

Ash touched his wet nose to Zahara's hand.

"Hm? Could you possibly…" Then she understood. It always seemed to take forever for people to know what he wanted. He didn't know why – it wasn't as if he was some sort of wolf or anything. So he couldn't speak. So what? Had no one heard of body language? "Ah! I have what you need, my furry friend."

From seemingly out of nowhere, she withdrew a tightly-wrapped roll of paper. Ash could smell it – it smelled like wax. Someone had wanted this scroll to survive. She tucked the paper into the saddlebag-like pouch on his back and patted his head again.

"That," Zahara said matter-of-factly, "is my best map of inland Faerûn. Try to keep it safe until Oceanus can give it back to me, or else."

Ash bumped her hand with his head. He licked it.

"He should be here soon, huh?" Zahara leaned back a little and the little girl put her head in the curve of her neck to go to sleep. "We can wait for a while, but if he gets stuck, the ship will cast off without him."

Ash growled. He didn't like the idea of leaving his master, or of Zahara even implying that she would.

"Shush. I know he planned for this. Getting a message to me without alerting the harbormaster and his wizard, paying off the crew to keep their mouths shut, _and_ arranging all of this foolishness at night? He probably has horses waiting, or a wizard. Go find him so he can see us off."

He licked her hand once more and playfully nipped at her metal bracers before turning and running off. There were still wererats to chase before this was all said and done.

Before he had disappeared into the alleyways leading deeper into the city, though, Ash heard Zahara's voice, "That boy still owes me for the cost of coming here, and after this he'll have to pay my other expenses as well…hah. Now, does anyone know where the Street of Gold is from here?"

* * *

Altaïr wouldn't admit it out loud, but every bit of his body ached. He had no idea how long he had been awake, but it seemed to have been at least a day or two. Between the panicked two-day ride to Masyaf after barely managing to kill Robert de Sable, the fight with al-Mualim, and then the fight just then with Entreri, he was on the brink of collapse. The entire situation was not helped by the ten or so fights the two of them had managed to get into within the hour after that.

"We can stop here." It took him a minute to realize that Oceanus was steering him into a sheltered alcove off one of the city's main streets. The priest pulled a small ceramic bottle out of his belt pouch as Altaïr leaned against the wall, watching him carefully but through a mind clouded by fatigue and pain.

"Concerned for my health, priest?" Altaïr asked, managing to keep his tone even despite the sudden flare of agony from his leg. Allah, what had that man been _using_? Poison?

"Amazingly, yes," Oceanus said in a sharper tone than Altaïr would have tolerated from a novice. Still, he was faintly amused when Oceanus forced the bottle into his hands with a noise that sounded like a frustrated sigh.

"What is this?" he asked. He pulled the cork out and heard something make a noise that sounded a lot like "fsssh."

"A healing potion I got from the supply room," he said. His tone changed a little, becoming softer. "I apologize for this."

"What do you have to apologize for?" Altaïr asked him, while still looking at the fizzing contents of the bottle with suspicion. Potions could do many things to a man, most of them bad.

"I did not plan for Entreri to be here." Oceanus admitted. "I knew he was in the city, but I though he would stay out of guild politics longer. If I knew he would be one of the guild enforcers, I would not have told you to fight him."

"If I recall correctly, you never told me to." Altaïr said absently as he shook the bottle gently to see if its contents would explode or something. Decisions, decisions… Would drinking this concoction kill him or allow him to regain his strength?

Oceanus sighed. "He carries weapons that most men here cannot even think of using. His dagger, in particular, is dangerous." Here there was a swish of cloth and Altaïr noticed that Oceanus was looking away. "It can destroy the souls of those it kills."

_That_ changed things. "It devours human souls?" Altaïr asked, his voice flat only because he wasn't quite sure how to express his shock without shouting. Too many eyes and ears were still trained on the streets, even in near-total darkness.

"Yes." Oceanus snapped. "And if I had known it was him I would have just tried to kill him from afar. It would have been safer." He made a vague gesture with both hands that came across as just something to do with his excess frustration.

"I imagine so." Altaïr said dryly. Scrutinizing the bottle for the final time, he sighed and downed the contents. As he expected, it was utterly alien to anything he had ever tasted before. Though the flavor was tolerable – sort of sweet in an empty way – the prickling sensation nearly caused him to spit it out in surprise. The fizzing sensation didn't stop in his mouth, though – he looked down to where the feeling had spread to his leg and watched as the line of blood sealed itself up.

Besides even that, he felt the ache in his muscles begin to fade a little and he looked at Oceanus in surprise. The priest paused as if to stare at him and Altaïr shook his head. Of course it would be magic. Everything else was rapidly becoming so, why not this?

"Finished?" Oceanus asked him impatiently.

"Yes. What was this?"

"I told you that already. It was a healing potion." Oceanus said. "You act as if you have never seen such a thing before."

Altaïr shook his head again. "I have not."

"Liar," the priest said, but without much heat. Altaïr was apparently wearing him down. He sighed and waved vaguely. "This is not the time for that. I—oh, no." Something new had caught the priest's attention. Altaïr glanced around the wall and spotted at least four figures approaching in the gloom.

The smell of carrion and sewage drifted over to the hidden pair as the wind shifted. Altaïr heard Oceanus start to cough.

"What are they?" he asked quietly as the priest covered his mouth and nose in attempt to muffle the noise. None of the shadows were moving like men – their gait was entirely wrong, their heads were bent, and they seemed to be moving on the balls of their feet, but not. He couldn't make out any details to help him determine what to make of them.

Oceanus pulled his scarf up over his face and answered in a muffled voice, "Ratmen." He made a noise that sounded like he was clearing his throat, or "_kragch_." It didn't sound like a word to Altaïr, not even a curse. "I was certain that Ash had killed them all."

"It seems you were mistaken." Altaïr hissed back. "What do we do to kill them? I assume that they are not like ordinary men and will be unnaturally strong?" He thought he heard claws scrabbling on the street.

"No, they are not like ordinary men, but they die like them." Oceanus growled. It sounded almost ridiculous with the priest's naturally high, soft voice, and Altaïr would have commented on it if the situation wasn't so desperate. "Just take care to avoid being bitten by them, or I shall have to kill you."

Not sure whether to take that as a serious threat or not, Altaïr looked to where the group of ratmen were prowling. Every once in a while, one of them would bend over and seem to…sniff the ground? What were they?

"Wererats are men who have been corrupted into half-rat, half-human monsters." Oceanus explained in a whisper. "They rule the tunnels under the city because they can see in total darkness, and they turn any intruders they find into more of their own."

"Is that so…" Altaïr muttered. The ratmen all abruptly turned to face their direction. Damn. "Do they fight with weapons or fang and claw?"

"In this state? Both." Oceanus said.

He heard the little green-eyed priest draw his weapons – a pair of viciously curved daggers that glowed white and blue – and he laid his right hand on the hilt of his eagle-pommel sword. "Wonderful," he said sarcastically. Man-shaped rats, glowing weaponry, and on top of everything else, his only ally was mad. This day was just getting better and better. The hidden blade couldn't be used here, either – they'd already lost the advantage of surprise, and there was no room for error – which made Altaïr fight back a sigh again. Nothing was going smoothly. It never did.

Oceanus stepped into the street and laughed, calling out something that sounded more like a plague victim's cough than any word. It was no language Altaïr had ever heard before, but he knew a challenge when he heard one.

"You are a fool." Altaïr said as he walked out of the shadows to stand beside the priest. The wererats seemed to grow excited at this – he ignored them. "Stealth would have served us better."

"So I hear." Oceanus responded instantly. He spun one of his daggers in his hand, almost idly. "But then, who can hide from rats? The very lowest of the low, born only to drive men mad with fever and shakes."

Interesting. He would play along for the moment. "I would not be so sure, were I you." Altair said just as nonchalantly. "Are rats not the most resilient of vermin?"

The ratmen began to snarl back, but because their mouths were closer to that of their animal form, they couldn't insult their opponents. Altaïr thought he saw Oceanus smirk.

"Perhaps. But how long can even their greatest warriors, the wererat guild, stand against steel?" Oceanus replied easily. "And fang?"

That was when Altaïr heard the scrabbling of claws on stone, and a howl that rose up from the darkness beyond their opponents. There was a white shape there, moving fast and growling the whole time. It was about half a second from striking the lead wererat at full speed when Altaïr finally heard Oceanus chuckle again.

"Good boy."

The street exploded into a melee.

There were panicked squeals from the monsters at first, as their leader tumbled into a desperate, thrashing tangle of limbs and teeth to avoid being ripped apart by the white canine. A second wererat attempted to help its comrade, only to be horribly slashed open as Ash's tail blade whipped around and hooked into its flesh. Then he managed to find the wererat's face amid all the smelly black fur, and bit down hard. The real screaming started.

They grew louder as Altaïr slashed another between the shoulder blades with his sword, cleaving into its flesh until stopped by a rib. Kicking the back of its knee (_Why does it have two in one leg_? was his thought), he forced the beast to its knees and pulled his blade back for a moment. He had just a fraction of a second to shift his grip from normal to reversed, and he did so easily. He plunged the sword through its ribcage with both hands and forced the creature to the ground under his weight.

Oceanus charged and slashed one across the face with one of his knives, severing its jaw muscles all along one side. As it screamed and flailed wildly, the rapier slicing into his right shoulder, he gritted his teeth and rolled with the strike, lengthening the wound but not allowing the blade to go in any further. He came up again from his dive, kicking the much larger fighter in the stomach with his leading foot. It wasn't a very strong kick, and certainly wouldn't have deterred a wererat normally, but Oceanus followed that up with a half-powered stab with his weakened arm. Even if he wasn't as strong as usual, the blade sank in easily – the steel was coated in silver, and it burned all the way to the beast's spine.

They were definitely attracting attention – more wererats crowded the street, following the cries of their fellows – but oddly, no city guards approached. Apparently street fights had long gone completely unregulated in Calimport.

Altaïr stopped swinging his blade first. Every sense screamed that this was quickly going to become an impossible fight. Though he couldn't see the approaching swarm of ratmen all that well, common sense said that, much like normal rats, they rarely hunted in small groups. That, and their smell was becoming almost overpowering.

"This is ridiculous," Oceanus grumbled. Altaïr didn't turn to look as the priest stood back-to-back with him. He had more important things to worry about.

There was a tearing sound as Ash turned from his last opponent and went for the throat of the shrieking one.

As the ratmen closed in, Altaïr heard Oceanus begin to mumble to himself as they both readied their blades for the second wave. "Where is it, where is it…?"

"What in the world are you muttering about?" Altaïr demanded, as the first foe came within striking distance.

At precisely that moment, the little priest grabbed him by the belt and yanked him to one side of the street. A split second later, something splashed exactly where they had just been and everything in sight caught fire. Shrieks rose from the ranks of the wererats and some of them seemed to be trying to put out flames on their fur.

The priest spun him around with strength borne of terror and snapped, "Climb as if your life depends on it, because it does!"

_So it does._ Altaïr thought as he scrambled up the front of what looked like a market stall that sold some sort of meat, finding finger-holds where no one else would - so quickly that he seemed to run up the wall. He turned back only once when he had reached the top, to see Ash rise from the center of the burning mass like some sort of demon. As the big white canine shook himself and the flames were abruptly put out, Altaïr turned and followed the priest across the rooftops.

There were a lot of things he wanted to say, most of them rude, incomprehensible, or just plain gibberish. So, instead, he said nothing at all as he and Oceanus went into a dead run, Ash having disappeared somewhere far behind.

* * *

"We should be safe here."

"No, my leg! My _leg_!"

"Shut him up!"

Ash heard that, heard the wererats scuttle about in the darkness. At this point, though, he just didn't care. He ran hard and fast through the streets, ignoring every fascinating smell the night always brought. Even the flaming oil in his fur didn't bother him much – hardly anything short of a hammer blow to the skull ever did.

His tongue trailing from his mouth, he ran at full speed, following the faint scent of his master and his master's new companion. They were fast, but they were limited to the rooftops just as Ash was limited to the streets thanks to a lack of opposable thumbs. Every once in a while he would catch a glimpse of the white-robed man, but never of his master, who wore dark colors tonight.

The bags on Ash's back clanged against his sides but didn't slow him much. He was carrying everything his master owned in this land far south of their home, but even with the armor, chain mail, and mace taking up space inside, Ash himself was too large to be bothered by the extra weight, even if his master hadn't used a bag of holding.

The only time it bothered him was when he was too wide to enter an alleyway he could have passed normally. Thankfully, he found alternatives to every last one of them, even if it meant bowling over the beggars in the area.

Upon reaching the docks, Ash saw his master and his companion leap down from the nearest roof. His master hit the ground and rolled, but the white-robed assassin landed easily, coming down only to one knee. Ash ran to greet them both and leapt up to lick his master's face, knocking the priest back down.

His master laughed and tried to push his head off to the side to avoid more licking. It didn't work. "Good boy, Ash. Very well done. Now could you let me up?"

Ash backed off, but he pushed his nose into his master's free hand, begging to be petted. His master scratched behind his ears and asked softly, "Ash, which ship?"

* * *

From the deck of the _Rusty_ _Iron Maiden_, Zahara observed her handiwork using a fellow pirate's spyglass. It had been at least five minutes and still the fireball burned. It had been a good idea to stow the fire seed in a little ball of blasting jelly, so it wouldn't go off until hitting the ground. Up in the crow's nest, someone whistled.

"That was a good shot, Lady Zahara," commented one of the crewmembers. She grinned at him.

"Thank you! I had wondered if that fireball would be able to arc from this far away." Zahara laughed. "He certainly will remember that Calishite coffee now." She was in a good mood – the spell had gone off perfectly, she hadn't heard any indignant yells from the city yet, and, best of all, the guard at the helm of the nearest Calishite warship was still asleep. There would be no reprisals so long as they managed to get out of the harbor in time.

"Over here!" someone shouted. She tore her eyes from the spyglass and looked down, spotting a pair of white shapes in the gloom. Squinting, she found that there was a third, darker silhouette, and she recognized it.

She turned to a fellow crewman and gestured for him to lower the gangplank. As he did so, the three shapes approached, finally stepping into the torchlight. She smiled brightly at all of them, even if they couldn't see it between the cover of her veil and the darkness.

She walked down to them, giggling. Yes, that was Oceanus all right – no one else had eyes like that – and Ash was safe, excellent, and… "Hm? Did you find a new companion, Oceanus?"

Oceanus glanced from her to the white-robed man. "In a way." He sighed. "Is everyone safe?"

"Hm? Well, yes, they are. Fifteen Ilmatari and any number of Calishites, yes?" Zahara replied after thinking about it for a moment. "It is fortunate that they only need to go to Memnon."

"Memnon?" Oceanus asked, and Zahara watched as he turned his head a little, much like his furry companion had been doing since the conversation had started. "Why Memnon? I thought they were going all the way back to Waterdeep!"

"They will, they will." Zahara said, making placating gestures as Oceanus's temper seemed to worsen. Funny, his parents had never been like this. "But the Waterdhavian Ilmatari are in the merchant district of Memnon right now, so it would be easier to have them rejoin their comrades there." She waved a hand vaguely. "Besides, this ship was not designed to carry so many for such a long journey."

"Did you already tell them?" Oceanus asked.

"Of course. The others are willing to wait in Memnon, and those who are with us do not mind being anywhere so long as it is not in Calimport." Zahara explained patiently.

"Ah…" There, got you. Oceanus shrugged. "If they have no objection, neither do I."

"Good." She had put this part off for long enough. "Also, where is my coffee?"

"Right here," he said with a soft laugh. She watched, fascinated, as Oceanus waved a hand and a sack appeared in a midair burst of green light. Zahara caught it, giggling.

"Thank you!" Zahara said with glee. "It is _so_ hard to find a decent selection at this time of year…hm? What is your friend staring at?"

It hadn't been something she would have taken notice of normally, but given that the man in white hadn't said a single thing since she had stepped off the gangplank, it should have stood out to her earlier. Zahara didn't feel fear or even much annoyance, only mild curiosity. She, like most other sorceresses, was absolutely confident of her abilities and of her appearance. It almost made sense for men to stare.

"I would imagine your clothes are doing that." Oceanus said dryly. "Or, possibly, he has never seen a summoning spell before."

Zahara smiled mischievously and Oceanus groaned. Tossing the sack of coffee back to a fellow crewmember, she walked right up to the man in white. She reached up and tugged playfully on his hood, then pulled it back before he could snap at her. It took, in all, less than a half-second.

For a moment, the world seemed to freeze.

He wasn't as old as she had thought – perhaps twenty-five at most – and she didn't mind what she saw. Dark brown hair, dark skin, but not as dark as her own, marked only once by a white scar that split his lip on the right side. His eyes were very dark, almost black, and they were wide with surprise. Zahara smiled again, standing on her tiptoes so she could look him nearly in the eye. Good.

She yanked the hood back down and spun away, giggling. "I should hope that you get out of the city safely."

Oceanus shook himself. "Wait."

She gave him a quizzical look, and waved for him to continue.

"There have been a few problems," he began. "Things have come up and, er… Would it be possible…?"

"If you wanted to come aboard, you only needed to ask." Zahara said. She wrapped the smaller spellcaster in a tighter hug than should have been possible for her size, lifting him off the ground to spin him in a dizzying circle. She only stopped when he made a noise like, "…ack!"

She put him down practically on top of Ash and gave him and his still-stunned friend a mock salute. "Welcome aboard, children!"

* * *

**A/N:** Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and _stop bothering me! _(I know this is like two weeks late but I can't bring myself to care all that much.)

Anyway, thanks for everyone who's favorite'd this and/or reviewed it! I really, really, appreciate it, and thanks especially to my beta, **kagami714**, who's been awesome. Like, seriously awesome.


	3. Things From The Deep

**Chapter Three: Things From The Deep**

**A/N**: Just because I managed to update somewhat-on-time means absolutely nothing for my schedule. I don't have one of those.

Also, relaxed-pace chapter warning. It's mostly for establishing Chekhov's Guns. Can you spot them all?

And thank you to (almost) everyone who reviewed!

**Edit (2/25/10):** Serious Author's Note at the bottom.

* * *

Altaïr could see the entire group's relief as they began to pull away from the Calimport docks. Ash leaned his heavy head on the white-clad assassin's knee as he sat down on the deck, trying to think. One frenzied escape from a hostile city down, only an unknown number more to go. He sighed.

Oceanus was already off talking with the woman from before—here Altaïr scratched Ash's rough fur to distract himself. It was not his fault that the woman had been not only beautiful, but wearing even less than the Companions in the mountain stronghold of Masyaf. It was embarrassing.

He could hear them chattering away in an undertone—everyone on deck could—but he couldn't understand what they said. Their language was apparently incomprehensible to everyone, even the priests who stood around staring at them as the conversation grew more heated. Finally, with one last short collection of sharp syllables, Oceanus stomped off into the darkness of the hold.

Lady Zahara laughed, waving off the group's concern and given them all a quick bow. She promptly disappeared, heading apparently toward the captain's cabin, still giggling and trailing a small group of male followers. Altaïr snorted.

Ash yawned and decided to place his head on Altaïr's boot, pinning his foot to the wooden deck. Altaïr rubbed the beast's big ears between his thumb and forefinger, making him roll over and wiggle on the deck. He shook his head, leaning back against the railing, and allowed Ash to lay his head on his leg, though he knew he probably would lose feeling in that limb within a few minutes.

"_Kalib_! Doggie!" The assassin jerked, looking up instantly to see a little girl running directly at him. Or, if that comment and Ash's immediate response were anything to reckon by, running at Ash. The beast sat up, allowing the girl to tackle him and grip his thick neck in her little hands.

Altaïr watched curiously as the little girl giggled while Ash licked her face with his tongue. "Doggie! Stop!"

Ash did stop – he rubbed his face against hers, instead. Altaïr noticed that he avoided putting any weight on the girl whatsoever, which seemed rather significant considering he still couldn't feel his right foot.

"Is he yours?" the little girl asked.

The assassin shook his head, avoiding meeting her eyes. He had never been fully comfortable around children, even when he had been one. There always seemed to be a massive disconnect between those children born into the Brotherhood and the others that lived in Masyaf.

"Then whose?" she asked, frowning. "Big doggies like this _always_ have rich owners." Oddly enough, it didn't sound like a complaint, just a statement of fact. Rich men tended to own large guard dogs, having the money to feed them.

That brought up a different question. Who exactly was the little priest? Unlike Lady Zahara, there was no outward display of wealth. He wore no jewelry or fine clothing, though Altaïr did notice that his were, while plain, well-made. As far as he could tell, other than the mace and armor, the man was just a normal priest. Well, except for his young age. Altaïr honestly could not tell how old Oceanus was, except "younger than I am." The fact that he looked and sounded like a woman complicated things.

"His name is Ash," the assassin offered, trying to take the customary harshness out of his voice. He was falling back into bad habits. "The priest owns him."

"Which one?" she asked.

"The little one," Altaïr said, "with green eyes." It occurred to him that she might have never seen Oceanus before. "The one who looks and sounds like a woman, and dresses like a thief."

That seemed to spark a memory. "I know him! But…he is always mad when I see him. When _Abbi_ tries to tell him about things."

Altaïr had no answer for that.

"We have to go away from home now." She seemed to be talking to the dog again. Good. "_Ummi_ says Calimport is not safe. Why?"

"Where are they now?" Altaïr asked, feeling his stomach turn. Oh, not again. He had been sure that he would be able to stand it. Stupid seasickness. He closed his eyes.

"_Abbi_ and _Ummi_ are below," she said. He heard Ash move around, and cracked open an eyelid. Ash had decided to flop down on the deck, his back against Altaïr's leg, and the little girl had buried herself in his fur. Altaïr sighed inwardly. "It is too hot down there."

Altaïr said nothing.

"Do you have a story?" she asked, her voice muffled by Ash's thick white fur.

"A story? No."

"Everyone has stories," she insisted, though it was partially cut off by a yawn.

Well, he did, he just wasn't sure why anyone would ever want to hear them. Stories of blood and death were practically all that composed his personal history. There was a reason he had become a Master Assassin before the age of twenty-five, after all.

But…most of the Brotherhood, particularly the _rafiqs_ and especially Malik, were the nearest thing to cultural experts. He could even remember Malik telling a long and involved story to his younger brother Kadar, back when they had all still been novices.

Before Kadar had died, killed by Altaïr's own recklessness and arrogance.

Pushing the memory away, Altaïr thought. Then, after a moment or two, he found one. It was a slightly foggy recollection, since he had been nearly asleep at the time and Malik had been trying to read aloud with no one listening, but Altaïr knew it by heart at this point, having heard a thousand versions since.

He began as he was sure these stories always went. This would be a very long one, if he started from the very beginning. "Once upon a time, there was a great Persian king…"

* * *

It was hard to believe that, barring any accidents, the _Rusty Iron Maiden_ was already halfway to Memnon. For Zahara, though, who had made the journey dozens of times before, there was nothing to say about this one other than that they hadn't been attacked by pirates yet. She did enjoy the stiff breeze coming over the waves, though, and she leaned forward on the railing to enjoy it. Yes, life was good.

Still, there were things to discuss with the new passengers. Usually the _Rusty Iron Maiden_ only accepted extra people if they could fight, so twenty useless boarders would bother the crew, or at least would once the glitter of bribe money wore off. Then she'd have to bully the ex-brigands into doing the work, or else have Oceanus pay them again. While she didn't usually reject the idea of making someone else have to spend money, Zahara knew that the little green-eyed priest had an abominable temper.

But there were other things to discuss before she threw that in his face.

She turned to him and said conversationally, "So, where did you get your friend? From my understanding, he fell from the sky." Which seemed valid – it had, after all, been one of the Ilmatari who had told her that, and they tended to be trustworthy, if rather dull and unimaginative.

Oceanus shrugged. "Actually, it was from a spell-made hole. I assumed it was a wizard's door."

"And it was not." It never was something simple, because that would have been normal. Oceanus never dealt with normal, because he was not. Zahara herself was not normal. She relished it, while her fellow oddities seldom did. She sometimes wondered about that. Besides, they had had this conversation last night, too.

"No, it was not," he grumbled.

She smiled, turning her head away so he couldn't see it. "I imagine that must be frustrating. Do you think he comes from another world?" Everyone who was anyone had heard of other planes of existence – the Abyss, the Nine Hells, the Feywilds, the Outlands…it was really only a question of which one.

"Compared to just being an ignorant fool? No." Oceanus _almost_ snapped. He knew better than that. He also knew he was getting away with it only because Zahara liked him.

Interesting. She had heard a defensive edge there, like he was trying to assure himself he was right. She faced him again, this time quite serious. "What has he told you?"

"Not much," her smaller companion admitted. "It is more that he does not recognize things. I had to explain to him what a healing potion was, and which city is the capital of Calimshan. Little things – everything could be explained by him being a foreigner."

"But he speaks Old Calishite more completely than you do." Zahara pointed out mildly. "And his name is unique, mostly. Much like many Calishites, he uses a patronymic and not a family name, but I have yet to hear of any Altaïr ibn La-Ahad before now. Even foreign-born assassins tend to have reputations."

"I have no reason to believe he is telling the truth." Oceanus said, crossing his arms.

"Stubborn," remarked Zahara, though without much heat. "And the item?"

"He has it." Oceanus replied. "And I have no idea what it is."

Zahara gave him a look best described as puzzled. Broadly. "It should not be a threat to anyone unless it is sentient like Crenishinobon. But it might be. I am not sure."

At the mention of the Crystal Shard, the evil artifact that had nearly destroyed the far northern regions twice in the last ten years, Oceanus frowned. He knew that people had an odd tendency to pick up things that could spell the end of the world, and Zahara knew he knew it. He wouldn't be stupid here.

"I find it hard to believe you have spent ten years on the high seas." Oceanus said, and Zahara recognized it as a poor attempt to change the subject.

She would allow it, though. "Oh, it was easy. At least, ten years in the desert would have been no harder, and I was born among those dunes we see there." She pointed at the yellowish-gray coast barely visible among the waves. They had decided to sail within sight of land for the most part, mostly for navigation purposes. Eventually, Oceanus just nodded.

"In any case, I think you should visit a place I know." Zahara said, pointedly ignoring Oceanus's non-response.

"Where?" Oceanus asked, though he seemed to be asking mostly out of whatever politeness he had left.

"Glad you asked!" Zahara had never let a thing like a lack of audience enthusiasm stop her. "It is a small place over the Snowflake Mountains! But the priest there is supposedly the Chosen of Deneir, so it is not as if you could make anything worse by seeking out his advice."

Oceanus made a face. "Deneir? As in, the one who works with Gond?"

"The very same," she told him. "But I would not worry. Deneir is a god of book knowledge, not making things explode."

"Why am I even going?" Oceanus demanded.

Zahara gave him a sharp look. "You are going to go see Cadderly Bonaduce because your friend needs to see him. Whether you agree with me or not, you can see as well as I can that things are going wrong. Altaïr is lost, and even the oldest among us would not be able to help. Take him to see Deneir and his priest, and maybe it will end well."

Oceanus remained silent for a moment after her scolding. "How do you even know he is from another world? How can you be _sure_?" His voice was incredulous, of course. It was a wonder the little priest had ever been a child, with an attitude like that. Especially given that their world was one of miracles.

Zahara's blue-green eyes narrowed. "One thing you learn at my age is that nothing is impossible. Less than four years ago, every god in the world was rendered mortal for three weeks and roamed the earth during the Time of Troubles. Thousands of years ago, the world was very nearly destroyed when a Netherese wizard tried to take the Weave from the goddess of magic, killing her and marking the end of the most powerful human civilization ever. And now, a Piece of Eden—the Apple of Eden, if I remember correctly—is now in Faerûn again."

She caught Oceanus's look of utter incomprehension. "Read more. It helps your mind." She decided not to mention that she had only come across the information in one of the deepest vaults of the Mulhorandi capital city, and by accident. It had taken a conversation with the city's high priest of Horus-Re before she had been sure the artifact was real. It would only annoy her companion and send him into a rant.

"It is an old Mulhorandi legend. They have a story from even before their gods brought them here thousands of years ago, and since they hardly remember _that_, it pays to pay attention to any cultural memory that lasts that long." Zahara held out a hand, and a shimmering golden orb appeared in it. Just an illusion, though Oceanus waved a hand through it to make sure. "There was an old race who crafted these items in a world without magic. They fought the Mulhorandi's ancestors for control of the world, and lost."

"The Pieces of Eden are very dangerous artifacts. There are legends that the Apple of Eden can -- what was the word? Oh, "hold a man bewitched." Something wrong?" She smiled at him, faintly disappointed that he knew so little. Zahara sighed. With his upbringing it was not terribly surprising, she supposed, that he was not an avid reader much like his father had been.

Oceanus shook himself. "Can it be used by anyone?" he asked.

"Perhaps. There are no records that the wielders of the item were anything special," Zahara replied. "The item seems to remain powerful no matter what."

"Oh, wonderful." Oceanus grumbled. "Are we to destroy it, then?"

"I doubt it. If your friend keeps it so close by that I have not even seen it, he most likely understands what it is." She flexed the fingers of one ring-laden brown hand. "Though I would ask him, if I were you. He has only you to depend on. Therefore, you will be the one to convince him to take that thing back where it came from. Besides, if the Mulhorandi texts are correct, that artifact is the key to many things in the world it comes from. It is the stuff religions are made from over there."

Oceanus gave her a look she remembered only because she had often worn it herself while telling her daughter why some thing was or was not allowed. She could hardly remember the last time it had been directed at her, though. "He does not trust me, and I have given him no reason to. What about you?"

She laughed. "I have done even less to gain his trust! Did you see how he reacted when he saw me? I offend his delicate sensibilities – aside from me, do you know of a single woman in any city who dresses as I do?"

Oceanus looked her up and down, seeming unimpressed. Zahara knew better. She wore very revealing clothing that left little to the imagination and enough jewelry to count as a dowry anywhere else, and – coupled with her buxom figure and playful nature – it made it very, very easy to offend the natives of any society she had ever been in. But because of her immense personal power as a combat sorceress, not one person had dared speak out. "I see your point."

"Exactly. So, you will take him to see the Chosen of Deneir?" She leaned back while hanging onto the railing, bracing her slipper-shod feet against the deck.

Oceanus sighed into the wind. "You say that as if I have a choice."

* * *

Altaïr heard Oceanus approach, but was not at all in a mood to acknowledge his presence. He was already facing two of the things he hated most in life that hadn't actually, _actively_ tried to kill him: death by drowning or, less seriously, seasickness. He leaned heavily against the railing near the middle of the ship, his eyes shut.

"Altaïr?" Oceanus asked, and Altaïr leapt on something—anything—to focus on other than his unstable stomach.

Still, his answer came out in a growl. "Yes?"

"Once we enter port in Memnon," he began, and then stopped. He knelt in front of Altaïr and waved a gloved hand in front of his face. "Are you ill?"

"Yes," the assassin snapped. "And if you think that is helping, you are sorely mistaken."

"I was only asking." Oceanus said, and when Altaïr opened his eyes again Oceanus was sitting down next to him, with his back against one of the boards that held the railing. "You have never been out to sea before, have you?"

"Briefly." Altaïr muttered. He groaned and ran a hand over his eyes. "Sibrand's ship never made it out of port before I got to him. Getting back to the docks was not much easier." But even if he hated ships, it was better than the one time he had failed to reach the water in time…

"I understand, I think." Oceanus said quietly. "Not fully—I have only killed a few times in self-defense—but I can imagine trying to pursue a target through such a district. Just playing among the docks was challenge enough when I was smaller."

Altaïr smirked under his hood. "I cannot imagine you any smaller than you are."

Oceanus glared at him. "I should throw you overboard."

"You mean to _ask_ someone to throw me overboard." Altaïr corrected. He couldn't help it. It was like talking to Malik again, but with the roles reversed. Oceanus's temper was shorter than his had ever been.

"No, I meant throw you over the railing personally." Oceanus shook himself immediately after the sentence slipped out. A crewmember passed by, grumbling to himself, and seemed to be heading over to speak with Zahara. Altaïr glanced up and tried to focus on the groups of other passengers, then gave up. "That was not what I meant to discuss with you, at any rate."

"Then what is it?" he asked, starting to let his thoughts drift. Wait, no, bad idea. His stomach turned over and he groaned, pressing his forehead to the back of his bracers.

Oceanus said nothing for a moment. Then, Altaïr felt something being pressed into his open palm and heard the priest say, "Take this."

Altaïr looked at it. It was a little brown cloth pouch. Carefully, he untied the string and tipped the contents out into his left hand. They were small, yellow slices of something covered in fine golden-brown powder.

"What is this?" Altair asked, holding up one piece to inspect. It smelled sharp and spicy, though he had no idea what it was.

"Candied ginger." Oceanus told him. "I bought some a while ago as a cure for seasickness for a friend of mine, a long way from here. Possibly as far east as Shou Long—I was not very good at navigating at the time."

The white-robed assassin gave him a curious look. "What exactly is 'ginger'?"

Oceanus gave him a blank look. "What, you have never heard of it? It is an edible root, much like a potato, but used as a spice."

"I have no idea what a potato is, either." Altaïr said sharply, losing patience. Then he stopped. "Wait, ginger is _zanjabîl_." Even if he understood two languages, that didn't mean he didn't trip up occasionally. It rarely embarrassed him, though. "This must have been very expensive."

"It was not – we bought it in the main market. If I had kept it any longer before candying it, it would have sprouted again." Oceanus tilted his head to one side for a moment, eyes narrowed, and then blew out a frustrated breath. "I am starting to believe her… Just eat it. Then you will be able to walk without holding on to the railing."

Altaïr stared after the priest as he reached into a thigh pouch and pulled out a large roll of parchment and flattened it out on the deck. The assassin in white sighed and swallowed the ginger, hardly chewing, as Oceanus weighed down each corner of the map with four knives he seemed to produce from nowhere. Altaïr sat down with his back braced against the wood as Oceanus mumbled to himself, marking on the map with a bit of charcoal.

"What is that?" Altaïr asked, leaning forward slowly to avoid upsetting his stomach further.

Oceanus glanced at him distractedly. "This is a map of Faerûn." He pointed to a small black dot on the edge of an inland bay. "This is Calimport. We are going here—," and here he pointed to a slightly smaller dot further north that sat opposite the first, across a large desert, "—to Memnon, and Lady Zahara has ordered me to take you _here_." Finally, his finger came down on a spot approximately a fourth of the way across the map from Memnon, across two ink mountain ranges and what the map's scale implied was more than a month's trek. "This is the rough location of Spirit Soaring."

"Why?" That question meant more than what was said. Why did she want him to go there? Why did she want Oceanus to take him there? What was it? Why was Oceanus even listening to her—he certainly had not so much as paused so far if someone had tried to make him do anything against his will. Why did it matter?

Oceanus actually looked him in the eyes this time. "That item you carry—the artifact. She thinks that it might be the key to something important."

Immediately Altaïr stiffened. How did she _know_? The priest went on, "It has a reputation here. Zahara has told me to send you home, and she says that the Chosen of Deneir, Cadderly Bonaduce, is the most reliable option." He gave a low, humorless laugh. "Personally, I doubt it, but this will not be the time I disobey my elders."

Altaïr's eyes narrowed. Alarm bells were going off in his head.

"I do not expect that you will believe that I want to do this out of the goodness of my heart." Oceanus went on quietly. "If it makes more sense, Zahara is not the sort of person to argue with. She believes, due to things she has read, that you come from nowhere on Faerûn, or anywhere on Toril."

Altaïr said nothing, but only because he was at a loss as for something to say. He knew he was from Masyaf, in Syria. He knew he had traveled to cities like Damascus and Jerusalem many times before. He also knew that he was very, very far from home when no one in this place had even heard of either. But… another world?

"So, in short, I believe you." Oceanus said, if grudgingly. "If you have a desire to return home, I will see that I do my best to get you there."

Altaïr was not convinced. "You were not so quick to believe me before."

"Zahara is very convincing." Oceanus grumbled. "And if I had protested any more than I did, she probably would have strangled me for being disrespectful."

Altaïr stared at him. "_Her_?"

"Yes. Despite her appearances, she is powerful enough to kill you, me, and everyone else on this ship, sink it, and then make it back to shore unscathed." Oceanus said, deadpan. "And because she thinks the artifact you hold—the Piece of Eden—is the key to getting you back home, she has ordered me to take you to see Cadderly Bonaduce so that he may figure out the actual method to do so."

"It sounds rather unbelievable." Altaïr muttered as his stomach began to settle.

"It is." Oceanus said with equal annoyance. "I should never have accepted this mission in the first place."

Altaïr declined to respond and just sighed.

* * *

Sometime later, Altaïr was leaning on the railing as Oceanus seemed to be attempting to fish for something to eat. Not that Altaïr actually had a problem with salted beef and day-old bread (having lived on worse), but the priest apparently did and it was at least interesting to watch. He had apparently somehow found a length of wood no one had been using and, tying a ridiculous length of wire to it, had managed to make what Altaïr would call a very, very rough fishing pole. It looked stupid, but he wasn't about to say anything along those lines to the priest.

"I suppose most people use nets where you come from." Oceanus said as he sat back, after tying the rod to the railing. "It works for shallow water, but not out here."

Altaïr rolled his eyes. "I guessed as much. What do you plan to catch?"

Oceanus shrugged. "It does not matter much. I can eat anything in this region." He yawned. "I have nothing else to do until we reach Memnon in any case."

"Memnon…what is the city like?" Altaïr asked, more out of a need to fill the silence than any actual curiosity.

Oceanus kept one eye on the rod as he spoke, "The city is a sieve. Much like Calimport, the poor district is absolutely massive, but in Memnon there are several competing religions. In the poor district, where the docks are, the most influential is the Church of Selûne. The clergy are all corrupt, I think, but it has been years since I have stayed there for any length of time."

"Every last one?" the assassin asked, already thinking of Garnier de Naplouse and his very…confused idea of what a good idea was. Torturing patients was not one of them, but nonetheless he had ordered a man's knees to be broken, all of ten minutes before Altaïr had finally caught up to him.

Oceanus waved vaguely. "Everyone I have spoken to seems to think so. Granted, it was Keras, so I probably should think carefully on whether or not he is actually telling the truth…"

Interesting. Sort of. "Keras?"

"He is a very close friend of mine." Oceanus explained as the rod jerked. "We grew up together. He is a Calishite—well, as far as anyone can tell—as well as being Zahara's only son."

"I find myself surprised that a woman like that has a son your age, then." Altaïr remarked. "She seems hardly older than I am."

"She is much older than she looks," was all Oceanus would say in reply. Then the subject changed, because the rod chose that moment to explode into splinters and sharp wire. "What in the Nine Hells—?"

"Altaïr, Oceanus, come and look at this!" Altaïr looked to the left and saw Zahara waving frantically at them. "We have attracted a monster!"

Altaïr blinked, then scrambled to his feet as a massive tentacle rose from the water and slammed down, spraying them all with saltwater and, in one unfortunate crewman's case, dead or stunned fish. Oceanus was already running, so quickly and off-balance that the assassin had to yank him back from the railing just as yet another tentacle slapped at the ship. Altaïr had to keep one hand on the cabin wall the keep from losing his balance

Nonetheless, they managed to make it to Zahara's side without losing any limbs.

"What is it?" Altaïr asked, staring at it.

"It" was a sixty-foot-long squid. At least, it looked a lot like a squid, but Altaïr had never seen one that was blue on top and yellow underneath, or one that looked up at them with such _intelligent_ malice. There were two long tentacles that continued to lash out at the ship and ten smaller ones gripped the hull. He could almost hear its beak tearing into the wood as the crew ran around screaming.

"That," Zahara said, looking down at it with something akin to amusement on her face, "is a kraken."

Oceanus slapped his own forehead. Altaïr blinked. What was a—well, apparently a kraken was a very large, very malevolent squid-monster.

"I should have known having you around would be a problem." Zahara remarked to Oceanus, patting his head. "You are now, officially, the only person I know who can catch a kraken while trying for tuna. Having you on board is like bringing a horse."

"Thank you ever so much." Oceanus grumbled. "Could you just kill it now? It is eating through the hull."

Zahara gave him a grin. "Of course! Except, well, there are a few things we need to discuss—"

Altaïr ignored them both and stared down at the creature. Maybe he was imagining things, but it looked like it understood every word they were saying. Certainly the one huge eye he could see was flickering back and forth between Oceanus and Zahara with disturbing comprehension. He watched silently as it brought the second tentacle up and, understanding instantly, swore and shoved the bickering pair as hard as he could, then jumped backwards.

The tentacle slammed into the deck, crushing the railing and splintering an entire section of the cabin beyond it. Suddenly the air was filled with screaming. He could hear Oceanus cursing furiously and Zahara chanting in some foreign tongue, but it didn't really matter because Altaïr was falling, and the only way out was into the ocean. He braced for impact, but couldn't do much else. He could swim, sort of, but he suspected that that wasn't going to save him from a giant squid.

His suspicions were confirmed when he felt something heavy wrap around his waist and drag him under the waves.

* * *

**A/N:** Thus ends chapter 3. I think. Thus does Altaïr get his second taste of Faerûn's aggressive weirdness, after the wererats and Ash at the same time. I imagine he won't be too fond of seafood after this.

Also, in case anyone was wondering, this story is _not_ heading in the direction of an epic quest to destroy the Tower of Ominousness or anything—frankly, the Piece of Eden is a bit underwhelming compared to some of the crazy items lying all over every country and kingdom in Faerûn. But there _will_ be mid-level (well, by _Forgotten Realms_ standards) villains after Altaïr in particular, starting after they arrive the second and third cities. It is, after all, his quest to get home.

And I _know_ that Altaïr, at the very least, doesn't instantly die upon touching water. But I don't think that, given where he lives, he has to be particularly good at it. And besides, _kraken_.

**EDIT (2/25/10): **With regards to Pieces of Eden vs. various native Faerûnian artifacts--I mean Faerûn had the _literal avatars of gods _walking around less than six years ago by the timeline I'm using (cough_TheSilentBlade_cough). Shocking things stop being special when they happen all the time. Then there are the nearly-godly epic-level idiots running around all over the place. Drizzt doesn't count, but Elminster and the Seven Sisters, along with any number of characters who feature in works other than those of R. A. Salvatore? Yeah. 4th Edition was largely an attempt to killl most of them off--and this story takes place in 3.5 edition.

Okay, I might not have made this part clear, either. Our favorite white-wearing Assassin was _not_ operating at peak condition. Think about it. Hacking his way through waves of Crusaders and Saracens, then two days straight ride back to Masyaf, then fighting fellow Assassins, AND _THEN_ fighting Al Mualim. Entreri was (since he hasn't pissed off the guild leaders yet and won't for a week or so) in top fighting condition and, on top of everything else our Master Assassin had working against him, Oceanus _didn't_ use magic to heal him until after the fight. Altair is not lucky to be alive because he got away from Entreri--he's lucky to be alive because _no normal man would have lasted this long_.

And to **mf**, I don't mind if you stop by to say hi, but please say more than "more please." Okay? Okay.


	4. High Seas Adventures

**Chapter Four: High Seas Adventures**

**A/N**: Don't worry, this is the last chapter where they spend the entire time on a boat.

And okay, so our favorite assassin is actually 6' tall, pretty much a foot taller than Oceanus is. Blame my crappy depth perception.

* * *

"Just use a fireball on it." Oceanus said.

"Have you no sense of artistry? That would be pointless and not a very good show." Zahara replied, tapping the railing idly.

Oceanus snorted. "Who cares? That _thing_ is attempting to eat your ship with the appetite of a landshark. Just kill it and be done with the entire issue."

Zahara gave him a knowing look. Neither of his parents had been _impatient_, exactly, but Sinya had always advocated certain kinds of painful death to anyone who annoyed him sufficiently. It was almost comforting to know that at least one of his father's worse traits had been passed on—maybe he had avoided the rest of what made Sinya such a terror to be around. Impatience she could deal with. Cold detachment from the rest of the world and a callous attitude toward everything that didn't qualify as "mine" was a little less tolerable. Half of those had been advantages, too, but not in a time of peace.

"I cannot use lightning here." Oceanus said flatly. "Lightning _catches_. I would rather not set your boat on fire and if I did manage to hit the water without it arcing back in my face, the sparks would not be able to reach the kraken without spreading to the ship and blasting everyone anyway. _No_."

Zahara waved a hand dismissively. "Your mother—"

"My mother is_ not here_, Lady Zahara." Oceanus _almost_ snapped. "She would use a huge water elemental to beat it to death, as you always seem so keen to tell me. I know that, but I never practiced summoning, and I have no intention to start while the kraken is trying to kill us."

"And, as a priest and a sorcerer but _not_ a necromancer, you have no skill with the more subtle, deadly spells." Zahara finished. "Well then, the simplest option is any number of druid spells…oh, you never studied those, either."

"No."

"And you never made an attempt to learn water-based spells such as the one for horrid wilting—the one that mummifies any opponent with bodily fluids of any sort?"

"No, never."

"And you never learned to control a magic missile spell tightly enough that it stays under your control."

"No."

Zahara threw her hands up in frustration. "What in the Nine Hells did you enter a wizard guild _for_, then? You clearly never learned anything useful from it."

"I wanted to see what it was like," Oceanus deadpanned. "And Alena was being forced to attend an academy for priestesses next door, while Keras went somewhere else to seek his fortune. None of the ideas worked out after the guild exploded, but you certainly could not say we failed to _try_."

"I would still like to know how you managed to escape the balor alive." Zahara said. "Or, indeed, why a balor was involved at all. As far as I can remember, summoning demon lords for any reason has been banned by every guild in Faerûn."

"People tell me that, but no one ever seems to obey rules like that. And, no, I am not going to attempt to invoke a higher power to kill a fifty-foot-long talking squid."

Zahara looked down at it. "Speaking of which, why is it keeping its mouth shut except to eat away at the hull?"

"I have no idea. I also have no idea how to speak Aquan, so diplomacy with a tentacle-laden monstrosity is up to you. If this conversation is over, I will be preparing to freeze it solid." Oceanus said flatly.

"What, no explosions?"

"_No_."

That was about when Oceanus noticed the squid grabbing the assassin he'd been traveling with and dragging him overboard.

* * *

_Twenty seconds previous..._

* * *

Nahuatl had been born in the warm southern waters a long way from the Sword Coast, deep in the yawning abyss where no light ever disturbed the murky depths. She remembered the air-filled caverns where only fungus would distinguish the walls from the floor, where the slaves dwelled. She had collected their ancestors in the years after she hatched, and she had quite liked being fawned over by the entranced creatures. The more they focused on her, the less likely it was that any of them would try to find the hidden air tunnels. It would be incredibly inconvenient if any of them escaped.

But over the years, a few had died or gotten too frail to work. Now that half a century had passed, she needed to find more servants. The most recent ones had been born with strange defects that made them worthless, so she had drowned them and started looking for another option.

She had heard that her ancestors collected their slaves from ships when there were no islanders willing to sacrifice anyone to her, so off Nahuatl had went. It had been a long journey and she had barely avoided the terrible bronze dragons that guarded the shallow-water reefs, but she had made it safely to the Sword Coast without losing any of her prized tentacles. The water was very warm and uncomfortable; as soon as she could, she would have to make her way back to her cool, dark grotto.

And she had happened upon a ship by following the fishhooks, like her ancestors had always done before her. Observing the humans on board, she found that they would do. There were many brown-skinned humans on board—not all healthy, of course, but the male in white seemed strong enough. If she had enough patience, he would make good breeding stock. The little pale female with green eyes was too small and frail, but there was a female in red that seemed to suit Nahuatl's needs. She only needed enough humans to restart her slaves' breeding pool—the rest could easily be food.

Still, she didn't like the way the little female and the one in red were talking about spells right over her head, even as she punched a hole in the wooden hull with her huge black beak. It was supposed to make the humans panic, but those two refused to pay the swaying deck any attention. The male in white watched her like some foreign bird, though, and Nahuatl made a note to herself: entrance this one first, once she had returned to her cooler, more pleasant underwater home. He could be trouble.

Nahuatl made her move.

* * *

Altaïr had never encountered squid outside of a market stall before, but he was rapidly becoming convinced that the only good squid was a dead one. The beast's blue-and-yellow tentacles curled tightly around his waist and Altaïr, trying to figure out whether to gasp in pain or surprise, blew out a stream of bubbles into the water. The only positive aspect of this entire situation was the fact that the squid wasn't going to rip him in half, but even that was mitigated somewhat—Altaïr's second-worst fear, after getting someone he cared about killed _again_, was death by drowning. It was too _slow_.

One of the smaller tentacles wrapped around his left arm, rendering it useless and worse, bleeding, as the suckers cut into him. Altaïr bit back a scream and concentrated on pulling his curved sword free of its scabbard. The hidden blade would be much better for _this_—

He'd never heard a squid scream before, but apparently driving a foot of steel through a tentacle worked well in triggering one. The monster recoiled and shrieked with a voice that would rock the foundations of a stone fortress. There were three downsides to this: one, Altaïr was jerked around in the water so violently that all remaining air left his lungs; two, the thrashing tentacle had taken his shorter blade with it and there was no way for him to get his shorter blade out; and three, he noticed that several other people had been pulled underwater with him, including a sailor who seemed to be missing a head. Altaïr would have looked away, but his vision was rapidly fading anyway.

There was a burst of bubbles in his face, and then suddenly Altaïr was staring into a gaping, yawning, beaked abyss ringed by twenty rows of circular death: black as pitch, snapping, slavering like a monstrous dog. If he had any air left to spare, he would have screamed.

Fear gave him strength. Altaïr tore his left arm free, ignoring the pain, and stabbed his hidden blade into the side of one of the suckers attached to his belt, digging the narrow steel under the beast's flesh and prying the tentacle apart. The beast's grip loosened.

The kraken roared, and the tentacle dragged him toward the deadly beak. Dragged him toward death.

There was a flash of bluish-white light and a sudden noise like bone snapping, and Altaïr found himself free of the kraken's grip but too tired, too close to drowning to care. Small hands gripped his shoulders and though the world was becoming hazy and dark, he could see Oceanus's bright green eyes blaze through the gloom. The priest didn't seem bothered by being underwater, but Altaïr couldn't bring himself to do anything about it.

Though his mind was hazy and the priest's voice was garbled by bubbles, Altaïr still heard Oceanus say something, even if he didn't know what.

The next thing Altaïr knew, he was on the surface, on his hands and knees, trying to cough water out of his lungs and regain his strength. The white-robed assassin didn't realize the logical problem with this until he could see clearly again, and then discovered that he hadn't actually managed to make it back to the ship. He really, _really_ hadn't.

He—Altaïr ibn La-Ahad, certainly not descended from Jesus of Nazareth as far as he knew—was standing on the surface of the _ocean_. He froze, caught between horror and stunned disbelief._ This is not happening. This is impossible!_

The moment of religious crisis was cut short when he heard Zahara shout from far away, "Run, you hooded fool! The kraken will surface soon!"

Altaïr only had to look down to confirm this, and seeing the beast approaching from below so quickly was enough to trigger the warrior instincts he had honed all his life. He drew his short blade before throwing himself to the side, as hard as he could. And anyway, he had always been the fastest assassin of his rank. Escaping a water-bound monster, after the grand chases with the guards of Jerusalem? Anything was easy in comparison. He was fairly certain that this didn't involve one sardonic rafik waiting at the other end of this chase to verbally flay him.

He was ready to kill it on _his_ terms.

The ghastly, alien beast exploded upward, throwing its bulk fully ten feet in the air and, landing with a loud smack on the water's surface, showered Altaïr with seawater and brine. Its tentacles slammed the water menacingly before withdrawing.

As it sank, Oceanus bobbed up next to him, treading water. He spat out seawater in a little fountain and then, glancing back at where the kraken had been, said tiredly, "We should go back to the ship."

Altaïr looked down. The priest's scarf was gone and there was nothing to hide his face or his hair now. Altaïr was starting to realize why they had been a secret, even aside from the fact that Oceanus was the most feminine-looking young man he had ever met. After a moment, the assassin said incredulously, "Your hair is _white_."

"Really? I would never have guessed." Oceanus snapped. He flipped onto his stomach and began to swim strongly back toward the ship, cutting through the waves.

Shaking his head, Altaïr decided to save the question for later. He still wanted to know how in Allah's name the priest could keep up with him when he was moving at a jog and Oceanus was still waterlogged.

"It is a little,"—stroke—"odd,"—stroke—"I know." Oceanus turned over and Altaïr watched him switch from butterfly to backstroke. He kicked almost idly and the assassin tried not to think about the fact that he was jumping over small waves every time he took a step forward on the water. "Odd" did not begin to cover it. The words "blasphemous" and "insanity" kept coming to mind.

"This entire world is strange." Altaïr muttered, watching the badly-battered _Rusty Iron Maiden_ float toward them. "Putting aside your unusual hair color, how is it that you can swim in the open ocean?"

"I grew up by the sea, remember?" Oceanus said, almost bored. "The first spell I learned to cast permanently was one for breathing water as though it were air, besides."

So his guide in this world was part fish. _Wonderful_. Instead, he said, "Your achievements must be the envy of the other priests of your order."

"Not in so many words." Oceanus said. "Or not at all." He paused, just stopping to float on his back. "That damnable squid is right below us, correct?"

"Yes."

"Why are you still here?"

"Unfortunately," the assassin said with disturbing calm, "it still has my sword."

With that, Oceanus twisted in the water and dove, while Altaïr stalked out of the kraken's path. It surfaced like a vengeful god, and yet managed to miss him completely. One tentacle, still impaled by Altaïr's sword, slapped the water hard enough to cause a minor tidal wave that nearly threw the assassin off his feet. Despite everything, though, the idea still struck Altaïr as fundamentally absurd. Losing his balance. _On top of the waves_. Malik was going to laugh for _ages_ about this if Altaïr ever got back to tell him about it.

Then Altaïr got back to his feet and tore the tip of one tentacle off with his short blade, causing the one curling around his boot to retreat abruptly.

"They can be rather stupid in the open air." Altaïr nearly jumped at the sound of that playful voice so close. He turned and found that, somehow, Zahara had managed to sneak up behind him. She was _also_ standing on the water. Did _everyone_ know how to use this spell?

"How—?" Altaïr began, but Zahara just smiled mysteriously, her lips sealed.

"Still handsome without the hood, I see." She waved a hand. "At this moment, Oceanus is fighting underwater and cutting the kraken to pieces from below." Altaïr had the feeling that this was the closest to an explanation he was going to get. "And now that I have finally managed to get that water-walking spell to work, we can end this." There was a flourish of pink silk and the assassin saw a silver-banded ruby ring flash on her left hand. The only reason he noticed it at all was because every other piece of jewelry she wore was set in gold.

"Sorceress, how powerful is your magic?" Altaïr ground out after a moment. He _hated_ being kept in the dark.

"Very powerful indeed," Zahara said cheerfully. "Now, that squid just needs to come up for a moment…"

There was another flash of blue light from below the waves. The kraken screamed so loudly that both of them could feel the sound in their bones and thrashed as if dying, then surged up toward them. Altaïr immediately retreated thirty feet to the left and made it out of range just before it burst free of the sea.

"Got you, you slimy tentacled _bitch_." Altaïr heard Zahara snarl, right before she took a deep breath and, twisting the ring on her finger, blew out a stream of reddish-orange fire so intense that the assassin could feel his clothes steaming. He retreated still further back as the blast caught the kraken on its descent, and _just kept coming_.

Well, after everything else he'd seen, this was almost mundane. At least he had seen fire-breathing performers before. As far as he could tell, this was just the magical version. Zahara waved the ring-laden hand again. The fire changed color from red to blue-white and the heat became unbearable even at a distance. He couldn't even look at it.

After a long moment, Zahara's flame died down. To be honest, Altaïr wasn't sure that the kraken was even still in one piece. Its formerly-blue and yellow flesh was blackened and collapsed when he tapped it with his short sword, and its eyes seemed to have shriveled in their huge sockets. And then, when he finally managed to find his sword among the ashes and crumbling monster parts, it was too hot to touch, which meant that he dropped it. Oh, _damn_ it. He swore a few more times before turning to go back to the ship short one weapon.

"I assume this is yours?" Oceanus said from somewhere by his feet.

The assassin looked down and the priest handed him his eagle-pommel blade, then resumed swimming toward the ship.

"Where were you?" Altaïr asked, giving his sword a sharp flick to get most of the water off. The salt would stay, though, and everyone knew seawater was a killer on metal. He needed to find a whetstone and polish, fast.

"Hiding. No kraken is anything compared to Zahara's flame spells." Oceanus said.

"I heard that." Zahara said from some distance away, apparently adjusting her rings again. "I do not regret killing the beast that took my sailors and several of my passengers. Though it is a pity that the beast is too terribly burned to be worth eating. We need more food."

Oceanus gagged. "You are _disgusting_."

"Says the priest who routinely eats raw fish." Zahara replied, crinkling her nose.

Altaïr ignored them both and continued walking toward the ship.

Until the spell on him failed, anyway.

* * *

That night was a quiet one. No one felt much like celebrating their victory over the beast after the final toll had been identified. Seven people had died in the attack, all in all—five of the Calishite passengers and two crewmen. All but one of them had drowned, either from being held underwater by the kraken or being trapped in the hold. The last had been ripped in half.

Altaïr leaned on the railing next to the little girl from before—whose name was apparently Tahirah—as Zahara and Oceanus lowered little candles in wooden boats into the now-calm ocean. Soon the sea was sparkling with seven little dots of orange light bobbing in the waves. Altaïr thought cynically that they wouldn't last an hour—there was a storm on the horizon.

Oceanus climbed up the rope dangling from the side of the ship and dropped unceremoniously onto the deck with a squelching noise. Altaïr watched silently as the priest tugged off a boot and emptied what seemed like half the sea from it.

The priest sighed, then looked over at the assassin and said, "You should go find another set of clothes. If you sleep in those, you might catch something."

Altaïr looked down—his robes were completely soaked and he was chilled to the bone, but he'd die before he complained about it. He'd had worse. It was nothing compared to the time he'd been caught in a snowstorm while on a mission in the mountains. "And you?"

"Never mind about me." Oceanus said, taking off his scarf and wringing it out. "A little water will never be the death of me."

"But_ I_ might be if you both still try to avoid obeying common sense for the sake of pride." Both of them looked up and saw Zahara walking toward them. She held a small glowing orb in her hand, and from the light it gave off they could see her stern expression. "There are extra clothes in the cabin. And if you _insist_ on wearing only what you have—" here she gave Oceanus a sharp look, "—Ash is finished helping the men block the hole in the hull. The patch will hold until Memnon."

Oceanus said nothing for a moment. Then, "I apologize."

"For what?" Zahara asked in a deceptively mild tone. "I doubt I would be first to tell either of you that you spend too much time and effort doing things that would get other people horribly killed. Despite your skill and achievements, I still have to remind you to take care of yourself…" She shook her head. Oceanus froze. "You are still a child in the ways of the world, little one. Remember that."

The sorceress left after tossing three more oiled blankets at them and extinguishing her glowing orb. For a moment, no one said anything. Then Oceanus groaned and flopped onto his back. A moment later, Ash appeared and Tahirah threw herself into the beast's fur with a squeal.

"That seemed rather out-of-place." Altaïr said as the little girl and the dog proceeded to roll around on the still-wet deck. Ash kept his tail-blade safely away from everyone even in play, though, and eventually it got stuck in the boards.

Oceanus sighed as he went to go and pull Ash's blade free. "It was nothing. Just an overprotective old woman who thinks I need an adult presence in my life."

"You seem old enough to decide for yourself what your life should hold." Altaïr lied—he had no idea how old Oceanus was, but it didn't seem like a good idea to mention that he barely looked thirteen. Like a thirteen-year-old girl, to be more specific.

"Perhaps to you," said the priest, "but she does have a point in saying that I am much younger than she is. But considering that she killed her own father and spent two years on the run afterward, I doubt she is the best "adult" in the equation."

_She __**what**__? _"Did I hear you say that she killed her own father?"

Oceanus glanced at him curiously. "Yes. I do not feel any sympathy for the man. He was trying to kill her son." With one final yank, the blade came free of the woodwork and Ash licked his master's face. "Good boy." He turned back to the stunned assassin, expression carefully blank. "He had no right to demand their presence at his dying ceremony. Not after disowning her. But she and her son—my brother in all but blood—went to see him despite years of bad blood. He returned their loyalty by trying to strike them both dead."

With that, Oceanus stood up and said, rather coolly, "Since she is still much more powerful than I am, though, I have to obey her orders. Do you have any preferences regarding spare clothes?"

* * *

Altaïr woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of waves slapping against the ship, as they always did.

He wasn't exactly surprised—his first night on the ship and every night thereafter had been disturbed by _everything_. While he could sleep in a rooftop garden, a hay cart, and on a bench while still upright, the fact remained that he slept in things that didn't _move_. The ginger the first day had helped and he'd started meditating so he wouldn't go insane, but it was still difficult to get any rest on the ship. And besides that, he'd taken one look at the crew's sleeping quarters below the deck and decided he'd pass on it. He hated hammocks.

Sleeping on the deck was unorthodox and probably not very safe, but it didn't seem to bother anyone else. Without even getting up, he could see that Oceanus and Tahirah were sleeping nearby, both almost enveloped by Ash's thick white fur. The little girl was sleeping between Ash and Oceanus, using the priest's cloak as a blanket and his arm as a pillow. None of them seemed inclined to move, though Ash's visible blue eye opened to stare at the assassin.

Altaïr sighed mentally and decided to at least make an attempt at falling asleep again. While he could function on practically no rest for a day or two, that didn't mean he liked it. It increased the chance he'd be killed or captured tenfold, and he'd already done it once in the last ten days for the sake of stopping a war. If he had a chance to rest, he'd take it.

Zahara's voice seemed to come from nowhere. "You seem to be early."

Altaïr froze and to his surprise, a second female voice murmured, "I always am, Zahara. You know me too well to be surprised."

The assassin was at a loss. He was one of the better Masters in terms of eavesdropping skills, particularly after the refresher course he'd been involuntarily put through after Solomon's Temple, but he also remembered that Zahara was a very destructive sorceress. He had no idea if this conversation was important to her, but he wouldn't take the chance of being discovered. For that reason, and sheer curiosity, he feigned sleep.

"That is true, but I have to ask why you would choose to appear on my ship." Zahara said, her voice cold. "You have no right to be here now."

The second woman seemed to sigh. "This is my home, my friend. It is my duty to protect my watery territory—it is, after all, _mine_. Your ship wandered into my waters, not the other way around."

"You betrayed everything we stood for." Zahara said harshly. "Your weakness allowed those fools to get the upper hand for the first time in a hundred years, even forgetting or forgiving what it did to your already-broken family. You never even _looked_—"

"It was a mistake," said the other woman, sharply. "I have been working tirelessly for the good of this region since. You think me such a fool as to let them run amok, completely unopposed by my power?"

Zahara laughed. "As if I needed to think on that. Your mistake is not _fixed_, Immersa. The Simbul and the Red Wizards can kill each other all they like, with or without your help. I want you off my ship because you failed in the most important duty of your life and you _continue_ to fail at every turn."

"His fate was out of my hands." Immersa said tightly.

"But if you had put any effort into it, the opposite would be true." Zahara snapped. "Then you abandoned us, you abandoned your subjects, and even your own family to grieve. For ten _years_!"

"I lost six children that day, Zahara." Immersa's tone had become very threatening. "Do not presume to understand."

"You assume I would sympathize with your past plight long after the time for that has passed." Zahara hissed. "_It happened two hundred years ago, Immersa_! The time for grieving is a hundred years past, and you have had a dozen chances to fix your mistake in abandoning the ones who needed you most. You continue to wallow in your self-hate, not even seeing a second chance when it dances in front of your face." Altaïr imagined Zahara's face contorting into a snarl. "_Look_ at him, Immersa, and tell me you would not give anything to make it up to him. Make me a liar."

Immersa seemed to have nothing to say to that. After a long silence, Zahara said sharply, "Well?"

There was a rustle of cloth and Zahara groaned. "Not now, Zahara. Perhaps I will follow your suggestion later. In any case, I was not here to make a social call."

Zahara scoffed. "Really? Then why do you darken my doorstep, if not to irritate me into attacking you?"

"Mock me all you like, desert sorceress." Immersa said stiffly. "But I have information regarding the stranger you seemed to have picked up."

"Tell me, then, ocean sorceress." Zahara responded, equally hostile. "What brings you from your watery cave?"

"The item attracts followers with less intent than Crenshinibon does," Immersa said slowly, "but it will bring misery to anyone who wields it. Not as directly, perhaps, but anyone who sees it will be compelled to take it by any means necessary."

"I doubt they will have any problems with it." Zahara said dismissively. "They are skilled enough that the common trash of inland Faerûn should be irritating at worst."

"Every wielder of such an item has thought so. There tend not to be many of them left." Immersa remarked. "So far, the item has not caused any undue interest among the underbelly of Faerûnian society, but it will not take much to convince the fools to strike. And with their attention comes the threat of attracting much more dangerous creatures."

"If any of them appears, Oceanus should be able to kill them." Zahara said. "We already know that his training on the subject of slaying monsters was extensive—Lumina has long since confirmed it. And though we know little about the assassin, his skills are great for the condition he was in. No doubt he will be difficult to kill once he recovers."

"I doubt either of them would survive being confronted by a balor or a pit fiend, no matter the preparations." Immersa said. Zahara gave a small gasp. "It has happened before. Crenshinibon could deal with the tanar'ri and the baatezu. This artifact you've discovered…it is no weapon. It can persuade, or possibly entrance, dozens of weak-minded creatures, but it has no power of its own. It is a record of human knowledge, and cannot be used to save oneself." She paused and Altaïr briefly entertained the idea of getting angry at her, denying that his fellow assassins were weak of mind or body with a blade, if necessary, but decided that he didn't know enough to strike in confidence.

When she spoke again, her voice was cool. "However, there are some unsubstantiated rumors of a wielder being able to coax greater powers from it. If the right fool were to snatch it…" Altaïr felt dread creep up his spine, almost as if it was trying to thwart his efforts to remain unnoticed

"You seem very informed." Zahara murmured. "Where did you discover—?"

"Not now." Immersa cut her off. "Just send the pair on their way. Dawn approaches."

Zahara said nothing for a moment. And then, quite coldly, she told the other woman, "If this gets them both killed, I will have your head on a pike."

"You can try, but you won't succeed." Immersa shot back.

The assassin didn't move as a splash sounded from the water below and as Zahara's footsteps signaled her trip back to the captain's room. When the deck was calm again and entirely bereft of feuding women, Altaïr opened his eyes to look at the cloudy skies above.

_What was __**that**__ about?_

* * *

The passengers were essentially thrown off the ship three days later without much explanation—apparently, Zahara was in a bad mood. They were given passports, papers, and other assorted documentation, a few gold coins each and told to get the hell out of her sight.

Oceanus had just sighed and dragged Altaïr along to find an inn.

* * *

"So, what's the status of the _Rusty Iron Maiden_, old priest?"

"What? Who are you?"

"Um…can you scry the ship's location? I asked you yesterday about it…"

"I must have been in the middle of falling asleep. I asked Danica to take notes for me if I was…oh, there it is. Is this your request?"

"Let's see…hm… "Please locate the ship called the _Rusty Iron Maiden_, captained by the sorceress Zahara Sandwhisper, probably sailing somewhere in the waters between Calimport and Waterdeep. – Keras Earthgrinder." This seems to be the exact wording, too."

"I see…but what exactly did you want with the captain of the ship, young man?"

"Don't you ever want to talk to your own mother? Besides, the boss lady asked me to find her and find out where my little brother's gone. He didn't send a note, but everyone I talked to in Calimport seems to think he ran off with her."

"…What?"

"…My lady asked me to find her most tenacious and stubborn agent, and I just so happen to want to speak to the woman who bore me."

"Oh. You could have just put it that way the first time, you know."

"I have a slight accent. Could you please contact her now, Cadderly?"

"Of course. You have the standard fee?"

"I have the gold right here. Just go slowly—wouldn't want to break an old man hip or anything, would you?"

* * *

**A/N:** End of chapter four.

Believe me; pretty much every single name mentioned is either of back-story or plot importance. It'll take a while for it to become apparent who is of the _most_ importance, but they are almost all going to show up.

Also, many apologies for not updating before this—pacing problems were giving me a headache, and getting into Prototype before completing _Assassin's Creed II _definitely put a wrench in the gears.

On the plus side, antagonists will come from _both_ halves of the crossover. It just remains to be seen how that will come into play.


	5. For the Sake of Pride

**Chapter Five: For the Sake of Pride**

**A/N:** Also known as "With Due Respect to John Calvin." Suffice to say everyone can be wrong.

It's just that, sometimes, it's not the best idea to _tell_ them that. Poor, stupid little priest with a huge mouth. ;p

* * *

For whatever reason, after finding them a rat-infested inn to stay in for the night and paying the innkeeper entirely too much, Oceanus had promptly disappeared with Ash, leaving Altaïr to do nothing but sit and wait.

The assassin's thought process regarding that could be summed up as "to hell with that."

"I hate this city." Oceanus grumbled as they made their way through the crowd. Ash trailed behind him, bladed tail nearly dragging on the ground to avoid slicing someone's throat. Altaïr followed at a distance, tailing the priest from the rooftops. It was just like being back in Damascus, only everything and everyone could turn out to be hostile. Just for safety's sake, he repeatedly stopped whenever the priest lost himself in a crowd to check the city with his Eagle Vision.

There were enough hostile auras—not even _guards_, just irritants—to give the assassin pause. The priest seemed to know where he was going, though. Altaïr resolved himself to following along, at least until he had a better idea what was going on.

As he watched, he could see a scuffle in the crowd up ahead. The tide of humanity seemed to flow around the growing cloud of dust, leaving the assassin to watch as a red aura and a pair of smaller white ones thrashed each other. Then Oceanus's blue aura appeared, just as the red one—a thief, probably—tore himself free of the fight and ran.

Sighing to himself, Altaïr blinked his vision back to normal and hurried across the rooftops with his eye on the little priest-in-disguise. When Altaïr caught sight of him again, he was talking to a pair of street urchins and nodding behind the thick desert scarf wrapped around his head and neck. Ash stood nearby, panting and wagging his long tail around so much that nearby citizens had to get out of the way or be slapped by the flat of the blade on the end.

Then Oceanus signaled to the pair of skinny boys, and the two broke into a run with Oceanus following, heading in the exact opposite direction the thief had and quickly climbing to the rooftops. Altaïr dropped back, keeping track of them but staying out of sight. Ash eventually joined the roving gang of delinquents, stopping only to give the assassin a one-eyed stare before following.

Altaïr watched as Oceanus and the gang he'd acquired began to slow. The taller boy was pointing out something on the streets to the younger children, with Ash bobbing his huge head, and then all of them disappeared over the edge of the rooftops and into the streets below.

Altaïr arrived just in time to see the priest and his followers slam directly into the thief from before. Oceanus seemed to feign misunderstanding and poor animal control as Ash held the man down and ran this huge pink tongue over his enemy's face. The two dark-skinned urchins, grinning widely and having the time of their lives, took to their heels and left the priest and the huge canine to run away from the livid thief, who hadn't seemed to notice he was robbed yet.

Not much later, in another district, Altaïr watched the priest and the urchins meet up again. If he wasn't mistaken, the priest slipped them several extra coins before bidding them goodbye.

By sheer coincidence, Oceanus turned so that Altaïr could read his lips. The priest had pulled down his scarf to brush grime from Ash's muzzle and the assassin saw him say, "It feels good to do good, right Ash? We should head back to the inn now, though. Our assassin is waiting."

They walked off, and Altaïr suddenly remembered that he had somewhere to be.

* * *

The previous night had been hellish. It was hot, yes, but Altaïr was used to that—the problem was that it seemed like someone was trying to rob them every twenty minutes, or else street children were begging Oceanus for thieving tips, or at least permission to borrow Ash for the night. It had ended after the priest had cast a variety of spells to seal the windows and doors, but then Oceanus couldn't sleep because the temperature in the room had been upgraded from "uncomfortably warm" to "stifling." And that had kept Altair awake, particularly after the priest had ordered Ash to "bother someone else."

The day had gotten off to a bad start, and by morning Altaïr knew it was just going to get worse once they set out for the temple of Selûne. Fending off pickpockets had never been so arduous, Altaïr was suffering from sensory overload (Eagle Vision was _not_ helping), and Oceanus's temper had just about reached its boiling point after the third time he'd been shoved.

Why exactly they were heading for the temple was anyone's guess—when Altaïr had asked, Oceanus had cut him off with a terse, "They can help us cut several weeks off our journey." Altaïr didn't bother asking how.

Altaïr knew an explosion of violence was imminent as soon as he saw the way the door priest looked at them. The priest was assessing them, but not for battle prowess and not really _seeing_ them, either. The priest saw their equipment, and their faces, but nothing else. Altaïr was certain the man was a greedy, sniveling coward, but all Gositek saw in Altaïr was a close-mouthed bodyguard. All Gositek saw in Oceanus was…

_Oh_. This would be interesting. From the looks Devout Gositek was giving Oceanus when he thought the green-eyed priest-in-disguise wasn't looking, the man thought Oceanus was a woman. A needy, prideful, _stubborn_ woman, but a woman nonetheless. A woman asking for favors of a corrupt clergy…

Altaïr wondered if he would need to step back a little to avoid being caught in the crossfire once the little priest realized what Gositek intended. He crossed his arms, conveniently leaving his hands within reach of his short and long swords.

"Are you _quite finished _with your blathering?" Oceanus growled as Gositek looked ready to launch into another longwinded explanation of why they couldn't see the head priest, Yinochek before the sun went down. "I have only so much patience, Gositek, and it is wearing very thin."

"Blathering? I do not believe you quite understand your situation, young lady." Gositek replied sharply, and Altaïr watched Oceanus freeze in place, staring at the other priest. Already he was starting to flush a deep red. It wouldn't be long now… "Divine Voice Yinochek is nearly sixty years old and has spent forty of these in devoted service to the goddess Selûne, spreading Her word. If you cannot pay even a small fee for your own soul's worth—only ten copper pieces or one silver coin—what makes you think you can be trusted not to sully his Holiness?" Here Gositek's voice dropped low enough that only Altaïr and Oceanus heard him, "There are only so many other options a young woman such as yourself can have, you understand."

"And what," the green-eyed priest said tightly, "might these options be, Devout Gositek?"

Altaïr started counting in his head. _Impending explosion in three, two…_

Gositek actually _leered_ at Oceanus and Altaïr struggled to keep himself from either laughing or strangling the other priest as a mercy killing no one would argue with. "There is always the procedure of devoting one's mind, body, and soul to Selûne…one of the ways that can be done is to comfort one of our priests…"

When Oceanus spoke, his deceptively high voice was strangely calm, "I understand perfectly." Pausing to take a breath, he tossed a glare over his shoulder at Altaïr, who gave him a carefully blank look in return.

Devout Gositek took Oceanus's hands in his own and Altaïr noted that the green-eyed priest's fingers were twitching. "Then you know that this is not a conversation for prying eyes. Come." Ash growled.

Oceanus snatched his hands back as though they were on fire, stunning the priest. "I believe all opportunities for polite conversation have been at an end for some time. You just failed to notice. So let me say this—I have spent the last few minutes desperately keeping myself from…from…"

"Yes?" Gositek said eagerly.

Oceanus made a strange expression that could only have been counted as a smile by a dying leper. "…From smiting you to ashes where you stand." In the ensuing silence, he whispered, "Devout Gositek, are you a true follower of the goddess Selûne?"

"Of course." But Gositek sounded confused. This was not going according to plan.

Altaïr hid a grin by bowing his head.

"Good. Then I am sure you would not want this temple reported to the Selûne followers known locally as "Lunatics" for their fanatically _violent_ zeal, excommunicated, and burned to the ground, would you?" Oceanus's voice went cold. "Or we could always solve this issue civilly."

Gositek's eyes narrowed after a brief flash of shock. "Now wait just one moment, you dirty foreign-born little b—!"

That was the moment when Oceanus apparently finally decided that civil conversation could go die in a spiked pit, and he promptly showed Gositek his decision by giving the other priest a swift uppercut to the stomach.

As the other priest was cringing on the ground, Oceanus snapped, "Foreign-born, fully-realized _priest_ of Bahamut the Platinum Dragon, thank you." Still keeping his eyes on Gositek, who was staring up at him in horror, the green-eyed priest pulled an amulet on a heavy chain from under his outer shirt. Though Altaïr couldn't see the emblem, he did see Gositek recoil. "We will see Yinochek _now_."

As Gositek turned white and scrambled back into the temple, Altaïr stifled a laugh and Oceanus pinched the bridge of his nose. Ash whined.

"You could have stepped in at any time, you know." Oceanus complained as the crowd tried to avoid them, spreading into an ever-widening circle.

Altaïr shrugged. "You could have stopped him any time you wished, as well."

"But…"

"A man fights his own battles." Altaïr told him. Ash barked his agreement.

Oceanus muttered something that sounded like another complaint, but Altaïr ignored him. Gositek was coming back, flanked by spearmen.

"If this plan of yours fails, what will you do?" Altaïr asked as the guards closed in and he felt the same sense of walking on a knife's edge as he had while playing scholar in Jerusalem.

"Ask me again once we get inside." Oceanus replied.

* * *

Out in the ocean beyond Memnon, rapidly heading toward Amn waters and out of range of most land-based attackers, the _Maiden_ was cutting through the waves in search of a rich new port to exploit.

This really just meant that her captain was bored, and her crew was starting to feel like they were in need of coin.

Zahara played with a copper piece, forcing it to dance between her fingers, and was still doing it when her first mate, Orakh, approached holding a mirror.

"It's for you, Captain." Orakh grumbled—he hadn't forgotten the vicious beating she'd handed him for stealing from the passengers' things, and he doubted the marks from her nails would ever fade completely—but he handed over the scrying mirror whole and unmarred, which was more than she could say of some of the men on the ship.

She dismissed him with a wave and rapped the silver-backed glass against the railing so the image cleared up. Then, she hissed in a language foreign to her entire crew, "_Keras? Is everything all right? You shouldn't be calling me while I'm at work!_"

Her son's face was anxious, those teal eyes wide and worried. "_I know, Mom, but it's serious. Where's Snowball?"_

"_Oceanus? We dropped him off in Memnon yesterday. He seemed normal enough, though that boy always seems to be a little touched in the head. _"

"_Damn! Mom, something weird's going on up here._" Keras's image flickered and Zahara smacked the mirror against the railing again, in a way that would have caused its creator to have a fit. "_I don't know what's wrong, but it's almost like someone's trying to keep me from finding him!_"

"_Could it be the item the assassin is carrying?_" she suggested, wondering if Immersa had been right. The other woman always seemed so self-righteous that it was hard to take her entirely seriously.

"_What assassin?_" Keras demanded. "_Mom, you didn't seriously give him a second mission to escort Artemis Entreri, did you? They'll kill each other before they get out of Calimshan!_"

"_No, this was someone else._" Zahara assured him. "_He was very polite, and besides, he was too young to be Entreri._"

"_I hope you're right, Mom._" Keras mumbled. "_Are you sure he'll be alive long enough to get here?_"

"_Most likely._" Zahara replied. "_Besides, I'm sure that…_" She trailed off, sniffing the air.

"_Mom?_"

"_We're_ _going to have to cut this short, sweetie_," she murmured, glancing at the sky. Just a little…well, that was an interesting speck of orange light. She, of all people, knew a delayed fireball when she saw one. "_Someone doesn't want me to help anyone anymore._" She broke the mirror's face on the railing and threw the shards overboard, just as the little fire-seed began to expand.

The fireball exploded onto the deck, setting the ship alight.

Zahara smiled, wreathed in flames, and walked over the railing even as the crew started screaming.

* * *

The inner sanctum of the temple was the sort of blatant, obnoxious luxury that Altaïr hadn't seen since his mission to assassinate Abu'l Nuquod. Silk tapestries hung from the walls, chandeliers brightened the entire room, polished mahogany tables laden with fine foods stood at both sides of the room, and servants scuttled to and fro among the guards, priests, and dozens of doors.

Altaïr, who had grown up in the mountain fortress of Masyaf while training to be a killer and could figure out how to sleep in a cliff face if necessary, found this display disgusting. This wasn't a temple, it was a manor. And this was in the _poor_ district? At least the Merchant King of Damascus had lived in a district where everyone was nearly as wealthy as he was. The temple of Selûne was a hideous parasite in comparison.

The only good thing about the entire situation was that, since Oceanus was a priest and he'd claimed that Altaïr was his bodyguard and Ash was his familiar, they hadn't needed to disarm (or in Ash's case, stay outside). The assassin could only imagine how long it would take both of them to get rid of all their hidden weapons—Altaïr carried twenty-five throwing knives any time he was able to and he remembered that Oceanus carried at least six. And who could possibly disarm Ash, who had a blade for a tail-tip?

"Memnon is a cesspit," Oceanus said quietly as they were led forward, "but the poor district is _special_."

"I see that." Altaïr said, "Though I am surprised by the _extent_." Already he was searching for escape routes because he could see that the situation could only get worse. The windows up near the ceiling looked breakable, and just from glancing at the walls he could see a dozen handholds. All of the guards had heavy polearms.

_My escape route is planned out._ He glanced at Oceanus, who had his gaze locked forward. _But not his. How are __**you**__ going to get out?_

After a long silence, Oceanus said in an undertone, "Most people come away from this place in a state of shock. If the crowds saw this, there would be a riot."

The man who held the title of Blessed Voice Proper, Yinochek, was _old_. Normally this wouldn't have even really registered with Altaïr beyond just being a fact he noticed—the Damascus rafik was old enough for his beard to turn white but was still capable of defending himself, and of all people _he_ knew that al Mualim had been dangerous to the last—but Yinochek didn't seem to have earned his years through hard work, skill, and wisdom. Yinochek was old because he had never _had_ to face danger and get away unscathed, instead living in the lap of luxury at the expense of his fellow man. He was soft.

Altaïr glanced at Oceanus as the little priest took in their surroundings again and began to scowl.

"You are the priest of Bahamut?" Yinochek wheezed from his…for lack of a better word, Altaïr had to call it a throne. For a man called the Blessed Voice Proper, Yinochek sounded every bit the old man he was, if not older and frailer still.

"Yes, I am." Oceanus said. "This is Altaïr ibn La-Ahad, my bodyguard." They had worked this all out beforehand, and Altaïr had to admit that the lie didn't lose any credit the more it was used. Oceanus was small and delicate-looking—of _course_ he would have a bodyguard who was taller than half the people in the city. It didn't hurt that the assassin still carried all four types of weapons he was proficient with, all in plain sight.

"I see. What did you wish to discuss with me?" Yinochek demanded.

Oceanus looked up at the old priest and said, in a voice like ice, "Explain to me the connection between indulgences and time spent on the Fugue Plane after death. I am afraid I do not understand."

Yinochek glared but answered anyway, "To be sure a dead soul avoids temptation by demons and devils on the Fugue Plane, we beseech the great Selûne to rescue them and take them into her arms. Is it wrong to ask that our priests be compensated for the divine drain on our bodies?"

All of this was as familiar to Altaïr as the concept of a potato (whatever that was), but Oceanus clearly understood. His scowl deepened.

"And what happens to the souls afterwards?" Oceanus asked coldly, not giving the old priest a chance to answer. "The Fugue Plane is where all human souls are judged, and every single one of them has to wait before being sent to their final resting place. If Selûne takes the souls of everyone who has ever paid indulgences, then she could surely reject many out of hand because she is both a great goddess and a goodly one and is free to do so. Then the souls simply go back to the Fugue Plane. But if every soul is judged there, then what is stopping worshippers of goodly gods everywhere from simply joining their god regardless of indulgences paid?" The question was clearly rhetorical, because the green-eyed priest went on, "And what stops evil men who have paid, in a twisted attempt at penance, from simply being flung to the mercy of the Lower Planes?" Oceanus took a deep breath. "Does money absolve a man of sins and grant passage into the domain of a great goddess after death, or is that just a lie you've fed your congregation?"

Altaïr thought about dropping a throwing dagger just to see if everyone in the room would jump.

Yinochek's expression became thunderous and Altaïr saw Oceanus twitch. "You dare—?"

"Yes, I dare!" Oceanus said in a voice that shook the rafters. "I dare to confront an ancient, corrupt high priest who makes whores of the women of this city and beggars of all others!"

The other priests stepped back. Gositek gaped.

"I dare to have you all excommunicated by your own goddess for putting your own comfort above caring for you people!" Altaïr heard gasps but was too busy staring at the little priest, who was speaking as though he had been possessed by a servant of Allah and spoke with His voice. And checking to see if his planned escape routes were still viable as avenues of attack.

"I DARE BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE_ WILL_!" The silver medallion on his chest flashed once, twice, the little white star glowing like a real one. Then Oceanus shook his head as if to clear it.

"A bold statement from the servant of a lesser god," Yinochek growled. "You threaten the very foundation of this city."

"Some things need to be torn down to start over cleanly," Oceanus replied, his voice cold. "And at least I am not a lesser _person_, Yinochek. A foul person makes a weak priest, and you are both."

Altaïr groaned mentally and checked his weapons. One, two, three…

"Guards, kill them!" Yinochek screamed.

Oceanus almost smiled. It was really more of a feral expression, but it was one Altaïr found he could match. "Ash, go wild."

The huge white canine in question, who had been lounging harmlessly at the assassin's side through the entire shouting match, leapt to his feet and charged forward with a bestial snarl. The fact that Ash still carried Oceanus's armor, mace, and other belongings in his bags did not help the priests any as he bowled them over.

At the same time, Altaïr drew his sword and fended off a spear-wielding guard's weapon before driving his foot into the hollow of the man's stomach. Anyone stupid enough to try and use a pike on a foot soldier was an _idiot_ and did not deserve to live. Altaïr punctuated the terminal lesson in tactics by snapping the hidden blade out and driving it through the man's chain mail and into the space between his third and fourth ribs.

Even while Oceanus fought off the guards, he continued yelling vicious taunts at the old man. Altaïr didn't exactly agree with the tactic, but it was the priest's choice if he wanted to make a bigger scene.

"How many of the dirty street rats are your spawn, Yinochek?" Oceanus shouted as he dodged a guard's spear and grabbed it, proceeding to break it over his knee. "How many, Yinochek? How many years has it been since you've moved one oh-so-holy foot from your cesspit of a temple? Answer me! I am sure the people would love to hear stories of what you have been up to for the last forty years!"

"I will see you burning the maw of a balor for this, filthy foreign guttersnipe!" Yinochek snarled. "To think that you could challenge a high priest of Selûne and speak blasphemy—for this, you deserve nothing short of an eternity in the Nine Hells!"

"Only if you go first!" barked the little priest. "The world will be a better place without you in it!"

Altaïr ducked a man's clumsy sword-strike and jammed his hidden blade into the man's eye. Then the hidden blade went away and the assassin spun on his heel, grabbing a man's fist and twisting his arm. A vicious kick to the guard's knee toppled him easily (if with a lot of screaming), and then Altaïr was on the move again, this time with his own longsword.

_Mouthy little_…the fact was, Oceanus was making the entire situation impossibly _worse_. Guards were swarming like flies to a kill, and more than anything Altaïr hated being surrounded. He could cut his way out, but he never escaped totally unscathed. And in a closed fight like this one, that meant that numbers would drag him down if he so much as stepped wrong.

So, Altaïr did what he always did whenever he was cornered—he ran.

Straight at the nearest wall.

Up and on top of the bookshelf, jump over toward the support beams—secure!—then clambering up on the beam and running across—_leap_ at the nearest junction—and then he was standing on top of a chandelier, the first of twenty-five throwing knives in hand.

_Shunk_. "AAAARGH!"

_One down_, the assassin thought grimly, moving along the beams as fast as he could and throwing still faster. _Knife to the eye_. Altaïr stood on the chandelier and leapt, catching another wooden beam spanning the room and swinging himself up onto his new attacking position.

One of the guards was trying to jab at him with his spear, but Altaïr was moving too fast for him and a flung knife silenced the man forever. Another tried to leap onto the beam after him—he was agile, Altaïr would give him that—but was met squarely by the assassin's hidden blade and fell soundlessly, his heart punctured. The corpse flattened two men and left Oceanus an opening to escape the crowd, which he didn't take. Of course he wouldn't—that would have been the _smart_ way out.

Still, Altaïr had his own problems. Now they were bringing in white-robed priests with shiny metal staves, and Oceanus, for whatever reason, immediately tackled one and punched him in the face. Ash was also targeting the priests rather than the guards—which almost made sense for him, given that Altaïr had just seen a spear shatter against the beast's fur—and leapt at one's throat.

The assassin just shook his head helplessly, deciding against intervening just yet. So far, no one had come up with a foolproof plan of attack against him that didn't involve losing an eye to the assassin's deadly accurate throws. Mostly because of that, he was being mostly left alone by the guards and free to pick them off at his leisure, though he didn't know how long that situation would last before the archers showed up. He was twenty feet in the air, still flinging knives at the choicest targets, and then it suddenly became clear he couldn't wait if he wanted to get out of the city in one piece.

Possibly only to the surprise of the green-eyed priest in question, Oceanus was surrounded and desperately fending off attacks from all sides. A slash here, a stab there…it would probably be about five minutes or so before the priest dropped of exhaustion or blood loss. Ash flailed wildly, slashing with his tail and tearing with his teeth, but neither was making that much of a dent in the mob for some reason.

Looking around, Altaïr spotted the old priest—Yinochek—waving his hands over another man. Suddenly, there were three of the same man standing there, all wavering and twitching so badly it made the assassin's eyes water. He looked down into the crowd and blinked, abruptly realizing that for every unique face in the crowd, there were three bodies and three sets of waving weapons—it was sorcery, all of it. Oceanus and Ash couldn't hurt the priests and guards because _they weren't real_.

Altaïr blinked rapidly and stared down at the mob, switching to Eagle Vision, and there he found the trick among the swarm of red and blue auras—he could see the real enemies as bright red and the false images as a paler red, barely visible. Oceanus was blue and Ash glowed white, and…and Yinochek was gold. Altaïr shook his sight back to normal, leaping to another beam, and then took aim. He threw one of his last knives at the old priest.

To his surprise, it flew true and straight and struck Yinochek in the shoulder just as the old priest was waving his hand in a complicated gesture. Altaïr didn't understand what the man was trying to do, but he did see a blast of green light flare around the room, casting the shadows into sharp relief and blinding half of the combatants. Altaïr counted himself lucky for pulling his hood down at the last second, but from the sounds of screams below, others hadn't been half as fortunate or skilled.

Shaking himself, the assassin dismissed the strange light and focused on getting back into melee range now that his ammunition was gone.

Ash howled, turning on a guard and snapping at him with his huge teeth bared, but when Altaïr jumped down from the rafters, he landed on the man next to Ash's target, knocking him senseless. The huge canine made a noise of confusion when his opponent disappeared, but there wasn't time to think about it.

Altaïr _moved_—this was where he could really fight.

He didn't relish confrontations with Saracen or Templar guards after a sleepless night, but there were times when he could only think of the blood singing in his veins and the sounds of clashing metal in his ears. Sometimes it happened in pursuit of a target; others, in the presence of his fellow Masyaf assassins during practice bouts. Maybe it was that these enemies were different and mysterious, but no matter the reason Altaïr was fighting as well as he ever had. Unaware that his pupils didn't contract and probably uncaring if he had been, the assassin flowed from one downed opponent to a new one in a flurry of blows that left his enemies dead or dying in his wake. He never missed, despite the dancing illusions. There was no grace beyond what was granted by speed and skill—he made cuts so quickly that the guards and priests couldn't respond fast enough to avoid sudden white death—and blood splattered all over the stones.

A blow connected—the strike of a mostly-deflected ax—and Altaïr didn't even acknowledge his attacker longer than it took to slash the man's eyes out with a swing of his short blade. Though his arm was numbed and would probably ache abominably later, Altaïr fought on.

Oceanus was slowing, even as Altaïr leapt into the fray without a second thought, and Ash plumbed the depths of savagery afforded to him by his bestial nature. Fifteen men lay dead at their feet (mostly due to Altaïr's vicious strikes) and many more were injured, but they kept coming. Every second they spent trying to hack at the human tide, the weaker they were becoming. Slowly but surely, they were losing.

"Altaïr." Oceanus gasped, catching the assassin's attention and, unfortunately, distracting him at exactly the wrong moment. Altaïr gained a slash across his shoulders for his trouble, though Ash immediately leapt on the man who'd struck that blow, fangs bared and bloody.

"What is so important that you can only say it now?" Altaïr demanded roughly over the death gurgles and the sound of tearing flesh, taking the priest by the shoulder and forcing him upright.

Oceanus swayed and the assassin noticed that the priest's gaze was unfocused—a complete turnaround to his usual glare. His eyes seemed to drift around as Altaïr spoke—it was a bad, _bad_ sign. Still, the priest muttered, "Someone…using a sleep spell."

Altaïr didn't have to guess at what such a spell did. "And…?"

"And I think…_ohhh_...someone hit me really hard…" Oceanus grimaced, putting a hand to his head. It came away with red on his fingertips. "Damn. And… still wouldn't be thinking right…" He backed up against the wall for support. "Just…just keep them off me for as long as you can. This is my fault…" Altaïr didn't know if he finished that sentence with "…so I have to be the one to fix this," but it was a nice thought, anyway.

Altaïr listened with half an ear as Oceanus muttered something that didn't exactly sound human under his breath. He was busy hacking at the second wave of guards with Ash at his side, trying to force down the nagging doubt that they were going to get out of this in pieces, at best.

His gaze drifted over to the Blessed Voice Proper after a particularly annoying enemy was finally cut down, and Altaïr momentarily was at a loss. The old priest was certainly doing something, even if Altaïr had no idea what.

Ash saw it too. And apparently the white canine did know what was happening, even if Altaïr didn't, because he immediately plowed through the fresh line of guards and threw himself at the old man, snarling.

The air flashed red and Ash was thrown back—Altaïr saw some sort of bubble around the old man. It looked almost like a shield…

Yinochek didn't even seem to notice Ash's assault, still deep in the trance as he was. It almost…Altaïr didn't exactly understand how spells worked here, but he did understand that in all the old stories, sorcerers needed to talk to weave their magic—they were tricksters one and all. But Altaïr couldn't stop this one from casting anything, which left him to try and fight off its effects once they came.

"Altaïr, Ash!" The assassin looked back and saw Oceanus gesturing frantically to them. "_Move_! It's a sleeping spell… " The priest trailed off, sagging against the wall as all of them felt the weight of the enchantment. Ash shook himself and wobbled over to his master, but Altaïr could feel the mantle of the spell pressing down on his mind.

That didn't stop him. He'd destroyed an army feeling worse than this. He'd cut down his own master feeling more fatigued. This? This was _nothing_.

What followed was a frantic blur to Altaïr. Oceanus fell senseless to the ground—Ash bit him to try and keep him awake—more guards swarmed like ants to a spilled honey pot—the old Blessed Voice Proper laughed—then there was a sensation of rushing darkness, and spinning.

Altaïr blinked and looked up at a sky filled with shining silver stars. He fell.

* * *

There was a flash of blue light and the last of the walking skeletons collapsed into a useless pile of bones, held together only by the enchanted wire they'd used to string it together in the first place. Together, the pair of necromancers—student and teacher—shook their heads. The older of the pair, a black-haired woman with pupil-less green eyes and a pair of curved horns jutting from the sides of her head, waved her apprentice off when he tried to clean up the remains of their experiment. It was a failure, of course—three zombies had exploded when he'd misjudged the amount of negative energy they could take, and they weren't making any progress with controlling large groups of undead anyway.

Yttress ran her thumb over the point of one of her horns, a nervous tic of hers with a tendency to draw blood, and ground her teeth together before grunting, "Go out and get something to eat before you try this again. I will not tolerate yet another disastrous failure like this one." With a sweep of her arm, the chamber began to fill with fetid swamp water to wash away the failed experiments. Turning away, she hissed, "Just…just get out of here."

Her apprentice bowed and left before the water started to flow over his boots.

It took a bit of luck and guesswork (mostly because the layout of his teacher's lair changed every day), but he managed to find his way to the surface. It didn't exactly smell like the mountain air he'd become used to over the years, but even swamp scents were frankly preferably to those of rotting corpses. Or worse, exploded corpses.

He sighed and sat down on a nearby log, just glad to be out of Yttress's presence. Even for a sorceress and a necromancer, she was unnerving to be around. He'd never asked her why she kept the horns, either.

Though he didn't exactly know why he'd been sent to be an apprentice to a woman who scared him and to learn an art he'd sworn off of as soon as he was freed from his masters years ago, he wasn't about to question orders. That wasn't in his nature and never had been. Still, it was better than being sent to spy on Thayan wizards or Netherese insurgents in the north. Very slightly, but still better. At least he had the option of eating something other than insects.

Speaking of which, even in the shadow cast by moonlight, he could still see something splash into the water some distance away. He could also see the ripples in the water as the local trolls and crocodiles started to move toward the motion.

On one hand, he'd never been one for heroics. That tendency had been beaten out of him over a life full of disappointments, if he'd ever had it to begin with. Most people in the swamp Yttress had carved into the landscape tended to die easily and too quickly for any rescue. Given her tendency toward black moods and petty violence, he hadn't really been surprised to discover that in the first place.

On another, he was pretty sure he recognized the big white shape that started mauling the local apex predators, and if he didn't get over there soon, there wouldn't been any crocodiles left to eat.

He sighed and tapped a nearby tree, mumbling a word of power. Then he walked into the bark and vanished.

* * *

Altaïr hit the water, hard. Lucky for him, it was shallow enough that he could stand upright on the muddy bottom and break the surface. He threw his hood back, trying to figure out where he was and what he was supposed to be doing, and suddenly he was face-to-face with Ash. More specifically, he was looking at Ash while the huge dog was trying to kill something that looked like a human made of slime and rock.

Whatever it was, Altaïr knew he wasn't about to start a fight when neck-deep in water that probably wasn't safe to drink. Flailing, he scrambled toward the nearest shore he could see, even as he saw crocodiles start to move in the darkness._ Great_.

Still, he managed to make it to relatively solid ground with a mouth full of toothy death snapping at his heels. Oceanus was already there—the assassin figured Ash had something to do with it—but was unconscious. That made the entire affair twice as difficult.

More of the twisted man-shapes moved against the darkness and Altaïr slashed one. To his shock, the blade actually ripped the creature's arm off, but it didn't seem to slow the beast at all. Grinning and showing off a mouth full of crooked teeth, it lunged at him and he reflexively slashed again, this time splitting its skull.

It fell, but he felt a stabbing pain in his leg—the arm was attacking on its own! He'd have to rip the claws out of his leg soon—he felt them digging in toward bone, but there was no time! Ash was lashing out blindly in the water, howling when a crocodile bit his rear leg and dragged him down—crocodiles and the strange man-beasts swarmed like the guards from not long before—

And flame appeared in the darkness next to an old swamp tree.

Altaïr blinked, trying to understand what had just happened, but then little spurts of fire were shooting from nowhere. A fireball struck one of the man-beasts and Altaïr stared in horror as the creature burst into flame as though it were made of kindling. All of the other monsters recoiled, some catching flame from the first one's dying spasm, and they began to retreat.

Altaïr's eyes narrowed when he saw a person seem to just _appear_ from the shadow of a swamp tree, a flame still glowing in his hand. Still, he couldn't do anything about it if he was busy trying to rip a clawed hand out of his leg. Which he was.

The stranger approached- Altaïr caught sight of black hair and eyes, over a shadowed face. "Who are—?" The stranger paused, looking down at Oceanus, and muttered, "Of course." The next thing Altaïr knew, he was setting the clawed arm alight with the strange fire in his hand and easing the weary assassin to the ground, as the final remnant of the dead monster burned away.

"What were those things?" Altaïr asked after a moment where his mind went completely blank out of shock. There were a lot of things he wanted to say—most of them rather foul curses—but he decided to stick to practical points for the sake of his sanity.

"Trolls," the stranger replied, kneeling and looking over both his and Oceanus's wounds as Ash finally managed to scramble out of the water, where the crocodiles were strangely passive all of a sudden. The flame flickered out, to be replaced by a tiny ball of white light. "They can be very dangerous in groups, but if you wave a torch they usually run away screaming." He glanced up and Altaïr realized that the stranger was probably a few years younger than he was, with a scar running from below one ear to his cheekbone. "Who are you?"

Altaïr grunted as the man gripped his knee and tried to get a better look at the puncture wounds on his calf. "Altaïr ibn La-Ahad."

Something changed in the young man's gaze, but it was only for an instant. "Well met," the dark-eyed man murmured, waving a hand over a tree stump. The wood burst into life as a squat, mobile tree stump with teeth. A moment later, two more joined it. Altaïr didn't even try to understand _that_. "You can call me Riyaz."

Riyaz snapped his fingers and the two tree stumps picked up both Altaïr and Oceanus like living chairs and followed jerkily as the man started to walk away. Ash whined as the strange man led them deeper into the swamp.

This was almost too much. It strained belief. "What are you?" Altaïr asked, desperate to understand the situation even a little bit, before he went insane.

Riyaz looked back at them, seeming slightly surprised. Altaïr thought he saw a shape in the gloom that didn't look anything like Ash, but was still obviously an animal. It disappeared when he blinked, though, and he dismissed it as a trick of the fog. Riyaz didn't seem to notice the momentary lapse in attention and said evenly, "I am a druid, an agent of balance among nature. You?"

"An assassin." Altaïr responded without thinking.

"Ah, so we have something in common, then." Riyaz remarked vaguely. "So, how did you get in this mess? Specifically, why are you here?"

Altaïr blinked. Then, after a moment to gather his thoughts, he explained the series of events that led them to end up stranded in a swamp.

Riyaz listened patiently until the assassin finished speaking, at which point he asked dryly, "So, when Oceanus wakes up…do you want to hit him first, or should I?"

**

* * *

**

**A/N: **And thus ends part five, where Oceanus proves that he should never be left in charge of diplomacy and occasionally needs a good whack upside the head.

And thank you to everyone who's still reading this!

Also, it says quite a bit about Zahara that her own son Keras expected a lot worse of her, huh? She's Chaotic Neutral clean through.


	6. Weathering the Storm

**Chapter Six: Weathering the Storm**

**A/N:** And now we had on to Part Six, wherein our favorite assassin discovers more about the world he's landed in (and how much he doesn't want to be in it) and Oceanus earns the right to be kicked in the teeth.

What? He's a jerk.

* * *

_Five minutes ago…_

* * *

Slightly outside the eastern border of the largest forest in Tethyr, there was a magical stone tower. In it, like with many such towers, lived a wizard.

And, oddly enough, a little halfling woman.

Perched on a windowsill, hanging on to the stone by her fingertips, the halfling said, "Hokiide, did you see that?" When he didn't answer, she poked him in the side of his head.

Her wizard friend, his long nose having been buried in a book, blinked up at her. "What?"

Irolima huffed—aside from her "balancing on a windowsill while trying to do something else" tendencies, she was at least more observant than Hokiide ever was. Sometimes she doubted that he'd survive a week without her. He'd probably die by tripping down the stairs and breaking his neck, all because he couldn't stop reading something. "The fireball."

Hokiide glanced out the window, putting down his book for the first time in six hours (and Irolima promptly hid it behind a jar of flour). Staring as the stars faded and the sky brightened as though the sun had risen ten hours early, they both watched something like a massive fireball streak across the sky above the Wealdath. Hokiide tapped the window's glass with a gloved hand, making the image shift from inland Tethyr to the coast shared by Tethyr and Amn, and they saw the fireball smash into the sea and a ship burst into flame.

Irolima shook her head as Hokiide tapped the glass again and the window returned to normal, walking back over to the heavy earthen oven he'd made for her a long time ago. She also checked the kettle and the cauldron on the fire nearby, glad that her wizard friend's mastery over heat made cooking in the tower bearable. The fires wouldn't burn living flesh, and the magic in the room automatically steered the excess heat and smoke out the chimney. Otherwise, the entire room would have probably baked their bones long ago.

"That was the third such spell in the last few weeks." Hokiide said quietly, writing in a small notebook he had apparently conjured from his sleeve. Irolima resisted the urge to say "I told you so."

The halfling sighed and focused on the food, pulling the lid off the cauldron and dipping a ladle into the depths of the soup. Well, dinner was almost ready, but…glancing back, Irolima had to stifle a groan—Hokiide had disappeared _again_. And he was probably going to skip meals, _again_. And then she'd find him fainted in the library, having to drag him up the damn stairs to his room for the fiftieth time.

There was a papery crash on the next floor down.

Irolima sighed theatrically and put the iron lid back on the cauldron. It was just like Hokiide to do something stupid like get buried in a book avalanche. Still, she left the room and walked down the stairs until she found the library, then began the arduous task of fishing her wizard out.

Unnoticed by either of them, the magic-detecting devices in the wizard's study all started shrieking. About a second later, they both felt it when a massive magical shockwave slashed through the tower, making a hundred tons of enchanted stone shudder.

* * *

Several minutes later, Altaïr sat as close as he dared to a roaring hearth fire, waiting for his clothes to dry. After another minute, hearing the water hiss in his robes and boots, he sighed and leaned back against a huge gray rock that had been placed in the room for some reason. Still, for the first time in a while, he was comfortable.

Riyaz had dismissed the walking tree stumps as soon as they'd arrived in the rocky den, which turned out to be a huge cave system with tunnels leading in every direction. The widest part of the cavernous lair seemed to be the first chamber, which was lit by little orbs of light hovering near the ceiling and was decorated almost entirely by rocks—or more particularly, statues. They were all of humans and animals, all recoiling in horror of…something, but they seemed exceptionally well-made. There was also a statue of a squat, snake-like creature with eight legs, but Altaïr didn't ask about that. Nearby plants—strange vine-like ones with leaves shaped like hands—waved in greeting as they entered.

It struck Altaïr that the name "Riyaz" meant "garden." So he could make plants move?

A surly female voice had ordered Riyaz to take Altaïr, Oceanus, and Ash to a smaller room off to the side, which turned out to be almost like a house in itself. There was only one bed, which Riyaz had unceremoniously dropped Oceanus onto, and a desk with a chair, as well as a bookshelf stuffed with tomes and various small objects Altaïr assumed were mementos, but no windows. Altaïr sat on the desk as Riyaz rushed to and fro from a nearby cabinet, pulling out bandages and something that smelled strongly of alcohol. Finally, the flurry of activity had ceased and Riyaz began to work.

He had started with Altaïr. First, he had to convince the assassin to strip to the waist and hold still for a few minutes, and then there was the actual treatment.

Riyaz chanted under his breath as he carefully cleaned the assassin's blade wounds with alcohol-soaked cloth (whatever it was, it definitely wasn't wine and it stung a lot) and blew on them. The slashes and punctures disappeared under his care, so quickly that Altaïr could watch it happen even in the dim light afforded by a nearby candelabrum.

"Was this Oceanus's doing?" Riyaz had asked while sealing the slash on Altaïr's back with a final wave of his hand.

_From a certain point a view, no_. However, Altaïr couldn't read Riyaz's impassive expression, so he opted for the vague approach. "I would not have been injured if not for his actions." Altaïr had replied carefully, trying to judge the druid's reaction.

But Riyaz had just sighed and said, "I see. In that case, when he is fully awake and healthy, I think you deserve the first punch."

Altaïr had made a noise of agreement, but decided to wait and see if the strike was still deserved until the priest woke. He might have learned his lesson. But if Oceanus agreed to spar with him, Altaïr planned to make the lesson painful.

At that point, Riyaz had started to work on Oceanus, starting from the rather nasty-looking swelling on the side of the priest's head. Ash had sat nearby, whining all the while, as the druid (_What __**was**__ a druid, anyway?_) cast his healing spells. Once that was done, he had shooed Altaïr out of the room, citing something about privacy and Oceanus's temper problems, but he'd been kind enough to provide the assassin with a second set of clothes and three blankets, and direct him toward the baths.

So, about two hours later, Altaïr had settled in front of the fire to wait. He wasn't sure if he dozed off at some point after that, but even if he had it didn't seem like anything had changed.

He yawned as he was joined by Ash, who curled up on the ugly bearskin rug next to the fire with his nose tucked into his tail fur. Altaïr wondered if he was going to fall asleep before the priest was going to be able to take a thoroughly-deserved whack upside the head, but that was about when he heard the door to the other room opening.

Riyaz walked out, dragging the white-haired priest along and dropping him next to Altaïr. Like the assassin, he was in another outfit entirely—a clean robe, in fact—and, if Altaïr's eyes weren't deceiving him, wrapping in a dozen feet of linen bandages. He was also still unconscious, which meant that the assassin couldn't hit him yet. Sighing, he decided it could probably wait until morning. Still, he glanced at the priest as Riyaz wrapped him in another set of blankets and Ash moved to lie next to him. Altaïr looked at Riyaz for an explanation.

After a minute under the assassin's unblinking stare, the druid said quietly, "He should be awake within a few hours. Until then, I will leave you to rest." As Riyaz stood, he seemed to wince and rub his hand reflexively, and if Altaïr wasn't mistaken, he limped as he walked. Just a bit, but it was there.

"Fine." Altaïr responded, immediately thinking of the aches that some of the older, retired assassins carried until they died. The elders spent a lot of time mentioning how their old bones—old breaks and old joints, usually—ached on cold mornings, whenever Altaïr had tended to them when he was still a novice. Nothing but herbs and hot baths ever seemed to change that.

Riyaz promptly disappeared as Ash wandered over, nudging Oceanus with his snout until the priest moved slightly and the huge dog was able to arrange himself around his companion more comfortably. As he did so, though, Ash gave Altaïr a strangely _intelligent_ look out of his single eye and pulled the blankets back from the priest's side.

What little of the priest's arm wasn't covered by bandages was marked by horrible burn scars, blotched and dark. As Altaïr tried to make sense of it, Ash yawned widely and tucked the sheets around the priest and turned the boy's face away from the fire. Oceanus seemed to stir, but Ash promptly shifted and managed to arrange himself so that the priest was partially lying on him. He didn't move again, except to breathe.

"What are you scheming, dog?" Altaïr murmured, rubbing the creature's ears. Ash leaned into his touch, closing his eye.

Almost immediately, there came a roar from the lower tunnels—the sound of a distant door opening, then a woman's voice, but harsh and rough—making Ash's black-tipped ears stand alert. "He _bit_ you? By Falazure's claws, why do you associate with that little—what is it now?"

There was a brief, unintelligible murmur.

The woman sighed. "Ignore my warning at your peril. I have dealt with his like before. _Orn vur aujir darastrix dartak yth_."

"I know. _Thric pothoc_."

"Then move along," the woman said coldly. "Get them out of here as soon as hospitality and practicality allow and then get back to work. We will have _words_ about this, you understand?"

"Perfectly."

"Good. Go now."

Altaïr sat back and waited as Riyaz reappeared, this time with a nasty slap mark standing out against his cheek and a long weapon—a black scythe—in his hand. The assassin decided not to ask, even as the druid sighed, sat down on the statue of the stumpy serpent, pulled out a whetstone, and started patiently sharpening the curved blade of his strange weapon. With the gentle crackling of the heath fire and the persistent, quiet grinding noise, it was peaceful. If Altaïr closed his eyes and ignored the harsh smell of the swamp and soap that had recently scoured the stone, he could almost pretend that he was still in Masyaf, teasing Malik and Kadar in the moments before they all fell asleep.

Altaïr blinked rapidly—those days had been gone for years. Kadar was dead; Malik was crippled. There was no way to bring back the innocent days they had spent together, but he couldn't let go of it. If not for him, neither of those things would have happened, even if they had grown apart over time even before then. Malik had forgiven him, but Altaïr knew it would take much longer for him to fully forgive himself.

Ash whined and pressed his nose against the assassin's arm. Altaïr rubbed the dog's ears, but otherwise didn't respond.

The night passed in contented silence.

* * *

Breakfast was a quiet affair, consisting only of polite inquiries about things like the location of the salt bowl, and there was no sign of the woman Altaïr had heard the previous night. They both murmured their own prayers over the food, each trying not to disturb the other's mealtime ritual, and then began to eat. Oceanus entered the room about halfway through the meal, still trying to pull his tunic over his head to hide the bandages and burns. This probably explained why he blundered around—he couldn't see a damn thing.

He promptly tripped over Ash's tail and ended up falling face-first down the stairs. There was a series of thumps and "Argh!" sounds.

Altaïr ignored it, as did Riyaz, and both of them took synchronized drinks from their cups. Ash stole a loaf of bread and knocked over the honey pot. All of them sighed.

Then, much louder, came a series of shouts and snarls.

First, Oceanus. "What are you _doing_ down here? It smells like you dug up a graveyard!"

Then the woman, furious. "What do you _think _I was doing, you ignorant little _rat_ of a child? I was raising ghasts!"

"_Why_?"

"Because otherwise the humans will come back," the woman snapped, "as you have so kindly demonstrated for me. I should have told my idiot apprentice to let you get eaten…"

"You actually think he would _listen_ to an order like that?"

"Yes. _She_ gave him to me to use as I see fit. _She_ knew my version of the arts should not be allowed to die with me. And you know him better than that."

"…You are a wretched creature."

"So I am. What, if anything, do you think you can do about it?"

"I…"

There was silence.

"Exactly. Get out."

There was a loud cracking sound.

About a minute later, Oceanus stumbled back up the stairs, rubbing his jaw.

"As things go, that was probably one of the gentler reproaches I have heard from her." Riyaz mumbled around a thick slice of some unnamed meat Altaïr had decided against eating. It was probably safer if he could identify what it was before trying it.

"Hah." Oceanus grumbled. Altaïr saw the priest's fingers glow white briefly. He rubbed it again and said with a sigh, "She probably could have done worse than nearly break my jaw, I guess."

"Most likely." Riyaz replied mildly.

Oceanus pulled out a chair and sat down, immediately grabbing a small bread roll from the central basket. Altaïr glanced at Riyaz, who just shook his head. Some people did things differently. Ash wandered over and stole a fish from the table, which everyone had long since given up on getting him to stop—he was too tall to keep from snatching anything he liked.

"So, what have you been doing since you were sent here, Ronan?" Oceanus asked, putting fruit jam on a roll.

Riyaz shrugged, seemingly unbothered by the fact that the priest had called him something other than his name. "I have been completing my objectives."

That sounded flat, even considering that Riyaz had about as much emotion as a stone.

"Have you already learned most of what you need to know, or are you still working on it?" Oceanus asked quietly.

"Yes." Riyaz replied.

That was possibly the most banal way to answer a question Altair had heard since his own time as a novice. Mostly because it managed to be technically correct while not explaining a damn thing. It was how he had used to talk to al Mualim during his delinquent days, right before his reeducation.

Oceanus sighed. "Ro, you can be honest with me. Are you happy being here with her?"

"No." Riyaz replied immediately.

"Why?" The way he said it seemed to imply that he already knew the answer.

"I have no interest in undergoing an apprenticeship to a woman who acts like a Host Tower master." Riyaz replied dully, turning to look at the statue of a man who stood as though raising a sword to strike, his face frozen in fury, as though it were a window.

Oceanus nodded to himself. "I understand. I will send a message to Lumina as soon as I can. Why in the world you would just let her deck you like that…"

Altaïr had several opinions on this, and most of them very loud and emphatic, but he decided not to say anything. He still didn't quite understand how the social system worked here. So far, it seemed as thought everything he had known at home was turned on its head.

Maybe that was a good point to start from.

"Is it that common for women to strike their men?" he asked, testing the waters.

Oceanus and Riyaz both looked at him like he had grown a second head. They exchanged incredulous glances.

After a moment, Oceanus explained carefully, "It is a master and apprentice behavior. Some teachers believe that students have to be beaten in order to learn. Yttress happens to be one of them."

This was still not quite adding up. Altaïr began, "But you…"

"_That_ is my decision." Oceanus interrupted harshly, making Altaïr blink at his vehemence.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence between the three of them (and Ash), Riyaz said in an undertone, "Did you ever explain the…?"

"No," the priest growled, "why?"

"Never mind." Riyaz muttered, shaking his head and returning to his slice of unidentifiable meat.

Oceanus snorted. He turned his attention back to Altaïr. "As it stands, we are more than seven hundred miles from where we should be heading. That failed teleportation spell…" He sighed. "It was supposed to take us out of the city, not this far." He pulled the extremely crumpled map from Ash's side bag and tried to smooth it out against the table.

Riyaz shrugged. "Teleportation spells can always go horribly wrong."

Oceanus gave him a sharp look. "Do we need to hear about the time with the drunken wizard and the dwarf and trying to teleport underground?"

"Probably, since you seem to have forgotten."

It gave Altaïr the strange feeling that everyone at the table knew what the hell that was supposed to mean, but wouldn't deign to tell him about it. This was precisely what was happening.

Finally, after a minute-long staring contest between the two, Oceanus groaned and said, "Yttress wants us to leave before sunset. She neglected to mention how. Would you mind providing us with some non-magical transportation…?"

Riyaz appeared to think about it. "Perhaps. We should talk to her about this."

Oceanus nodded and then glanced back at Altaïr. "Wait outside. This should be over shortly, one way or another." Ash stood up, having devoured two plates of fish, and promptly grabbed the assassin's pants to drag him away.

Riyaz paused. He turned back, pointing at a different alcove marked by strange symbols. "If you go that way first, you will find that your clothes are dry, and I made sure to pack spare clothes and supplies for both of you. Blade will show you how to avoid the traps."

"Blade?" But even as Altaïr asked, something huge and brown began to materialize out of mist that seemed to appear from nowhere. After a few seconds, the mist solidified into a light brown creature nearly ten feet long. Ash immediately started growling.

"Blade is a dire weasel, and my animal companion." As if understanding that it was being talked about, the beast reared up on its hind legs and nuzzled Riyaz's neck. It wasn't even standing up straight and still was more than five feet tall. Riyaz tweaked one of its ears and the beast settled down. "Go."

The stubby-legged beast trotted off down the hall, its long tail smacking Ash in the face and prompting him to growl even more fiercely. It yawned, displaying fangs that seemed almost too large for its head, and Altaïr suddenly noticed that its brow, shoulders, and hips were all tipped in spiked bone ridges. And that it had sharp white claws on all of its feet.

Altaïr sighed to himself and followed Blade down the hallway, Ash growling at his heels.

Then he turned around, caught Oceanus by the shoulder, and punched the unsuspecting priest in the face.

Then he left with Blade, leaving the priest sputtering in impotent rage and hearing something that sounded a little like a laugh from Riyaz.

* * *

Keras was bored.

It didn't happen often—he was an expert at stirring up trouble and fun and always had been. But for the past three days, he'd rifled through all of the scripture in Spirit Soaring, talked to a pair of crazy gnomes who were trying to create a golem that could shoot little bits of lead instead of swinging a mace, helped Danica look after the twins and the pair of dwarf brothers who didn't seem to have a single scrap of navigation sense between them, and pestered the priest Cadderly for hours on end. While the man was getting younger, regaining the life force he'd sacrificed in the name of Deneir to build Spirit Soaring in the first place, he still didn't have the patience necessary to deal with Keras when the swordsman was looking for entertainment.

Not a lot of people did.

Keras dozed lightly on the roof of the cathedral, at a loss as to what else he could do other than soak up the remaining sunlight. Lumina had ordered him to stay in the region, even if it started snowing and the passes got blocked up before Oceanus and his mysterious companion arrived. He didn't always listen to her, preferring to act on his own whenever practical, but staying in the Snowflake Mountains was giving him an opportunity to see Oceanus again. He could deal with orders for that.

Still, in the panicked minutes after seeing his mother's ship go up in flames, Keras had frantically gotten Cadderly to call Lumina. After calming him down, his boss had told him what she knew about Oceanus and Zahara and the mission she'd given him out of the blue. Keras didn't know what a Piece of Eden was, and neither did Lumina, but she had told him that his mother had discovered writings about powerful items from Mulhorand. Maybe they weren't from the desert nation, exactly, but Lumina had been sure that Zahara knew what she was doing.

He doubted that—his mother had a tendency toward doing things on a whim—but whatever the case, he'd been more focused on the last tidbit of information Lumina had revealed about her quick check-in with Zahara. Seemingly at random, Immersa had picked _this_ as the moment to get involved with Lumina and Zahara's pan-continental scheming.

Keras wasn't sure why the ocean-dwelling witch would choose to be useful now of all times, but he supposed it wasn't his problem. As long as she didn't try to pull the same manipulative tricks that Lumina and Zahara specialized in, he'd be fine. Otherwise there would probably be a fight.

So, all that left him to do was to follow orders. But that didn't mean he was confined by them. Keras sat up, rubbing his eyes, and then began to climb down the building as he heard Cadderly starting to wake up from his afternoon nap. If his mother wasn't going to be answering any messages for a while, he could still call someone else.

Besides, the fireball his mother had been struck by was not a lone occurrence. According to Lumina and, later, Hokiide and Irolima (whose job it was to watch over Tethyr and other nearby nations for signs of trouble), there had been single-target attacks up and down the coasts all month. If the fireball strikes were working their way inland, Keras wanted to know. Somehow, it felt like the precursor to a major attack of some sort, even if he didn't know by whom. Whenever someone started a war, Lumina's people got caught up in it just like everyone else.

"Hey, Danica." Keras said as he saw the woman resting on a bench, with the twins and the dwarves nowhere in sight. He could hear them traipsing through the hedge maze outside, though.

She looked up. "Yes?"

"When Cadderly has time, can you ask him to try opening a scrying conversation with a woman named Immersa? I think I need to ask her about these attacks I've been hearing about, and maybe a bit about a magic device."

* * *

"So, you want to play packhorse for those two fools?" Yttress asked him not all that long afterward, the scorn in her voice evident.

He didn't bother to defend his position. She would just argue him to pieces over it, and in the end he'd end up doing what he wanted anyway. Even if she threatened to rip him in half every single time. She couldn't follow through. She wouldn't risk it.

There were, after all, far worse things than death.

But that didn't mean she would leave him in peace. That wasn't in her nature.

And she could make things _hurt_. All he could really say regarding her treatment of him was that he'd had worse. Much, much worse, and from people he now knew he _should_ have been able to trust much more than he would ever trust her. At least she didn't expect him to like her, either. That wasn't what either of them was there for.

Still, she'd agreed that he could take them as far as the edge of her territory. No farther, but since her land was comprised over five hundred square miles of swamps, rivers, forest, and remarkably difficult bog, it would probably save them two or three weeks of slogging through the muck. Even if he didn't really know Altaïr that well, he did owe Oceanus that much. Oceanus had seen and done far worse for his sake before.

It was just a little unfortunate that this particular favor required him to take off all his clothes. And on top of everything, Yttress _wouldn't go away_. Even half-submerged in the water of the exit pool Yttress had once designated for emergency escapes only, he _did_ realize that this was probably one of the more awkward non-life-threatening situations he'd ever been placed in. It didn't help that she'd taken all of his clothes and folded them neatly some distance away and was now giving him her best flat stare.

Maybe to someone else, it would have been creepy to the point of intimidating him or her into doing whatever she wanted. He stared back, unfazed. She didn't know his entire history—Lumina had deliberately avoided mentioning much of his adolescence and the events therein when she had sent him here. Maybe that was why Yttress didn't fully understand his own brand of stubbornness.

"Tell me, why would you think this is a good idea?" Yttress asked, and he felt her sharp nails draw a line of blood parallel to one of the many scars along his back. They weren't from her, but sometimes she speculated too much. He didn't even remember where he'd gotten half of them, to be honest, but so far she hadn't left a permanent mark.

This was going to _hurt_ when he got back… "Some things are just that important," he replied tonelessly, walking deeper into the water so he could concentrate. It was so much easier when he didn't skip it for three days…oh well. There were some things worth giving up comfort for.

Yttress's mildly annoyed expression didn't change even as his perspective did, not even after the flash of blue-green light strong enough to sear through human eyelids.

"Well then, Riyaz, you had better leave before I become impatient. It is only a warning sign," she said coldly, her fingernails briefly lengthening into jet-black claws. A dull pattern of scales appeared on her brown skin. "You will not like me when I get _angry_." She grinned suddenly, showing off a mouth full of sharp gray teeth.

He left as fast as he could swim out of the escape tunnel. That was fast indeed.

* * *

Yttress smirked to herself as her foolish apprentice fled. "I wonder, will you ever be worth my time? If you cannot even see that your little friend has had almost all of his power blocked…perhaps not."

It turned out that Riyaz had provided spare outfits for both of them, and enough provisions for two weeks. That alone had marked him as more practical and probably more considerate than Oceanus was. Granted, Oceanus had wandered in while Altaïr was changing, apparently wondering what was taking so long, and had helped the assassin with the strange new garments, but still. And Altaïr still didn't know what all the damn belts were for.

Still, whatever the odd circumstances, they were waiting outside with Ash and Blade when the nearby lake started shuddering. And then the surface of the water exploded.

Altaïr wasn't soaked, but he looked away instinctively. Oceanus was already yelling, "What in the Nine Hells was that about?" by the time the assassin opened his eyes again and finally got a chance to take in what he was seeing.

It was larger than any creature Altaïr had ever seen. It was probably forty feet long, with scales in a dozen shades of dark blue and green and huge wings with a total of five "fingers" keeping them tightly folded. It had a face like a crocodile that had run face-first into a wall and had all of its facial bones heal crooked, topped with a craggy green horn that was almost met by those jutting lower teeth. It moved then, turning to face them with its tiny black eyes staring, and Altaïr found that he couldn't move. Four long, muscled legs, two wings, one thick tail lined with what looked like heavy scale armor, large ears that flicked like a massive dog's, huge spinal frill and long, thick neck and it was _looming over them_ _mouth wide open_…

Oceanus coughed. "Altaïr, this is one of Riyaz's powers."

"What?" He gaped at the priest, looking back and forth between the pair. The monster was allowing Blade to crawl onto its head, not protesting as the weasel's sharp claws found holds in the crevasses of its scales. Then the dark eyes focused on him again.

Oceanus ignored him. "Riyaz, the harness is on _backwards_."

The beast turned its head this way and that, looking at the heavy leatherwork. It opened its mouth and spoke in Riyaz's voice, saying, "So it is. Could you help me rearrange this, then?"

Oceanus sighed. "Sure." And the priest started pulling at the buckles around Riyaz's ribcage, undoing most of them in seconds.

"…What _are_ you?" Altaïr asked after a moment, immediately after which Oceanus gave a shout of triumph and the leather harness fell to the ground once Riyaz shook himself.

Riyaz turned back to the assassin, lowering his huge head so he could meet his eyes. "I am a dragon."

"Thank you for stating the obvious." Oceanus growled, trying to pull the harness into a more useful shape out of the mess of tangles it was at the moment. "Gods-damned ridiculous contraptions…" There was a faint "argh!" when said contraption proceeded to entangle him.

Riyaz tilted his head, one ear lashing the air. Hesitantly, Altaïr raised his hand and realized that Riyaz's eyes were the same. Larger, of course, and in a different face, but there was no malice there.

"I am of mixed bloodlines." Riyaz said, allowing Altaïr to touch the craggy horn mounted between his eyes. There were vicious gashes in the bone that gave it its jagged appearance, and when Altaïr looked, he noticed that there wasn't a square foot of scales that didn't have some sort of scar on it. Some of them were large enough that he shuddered to think of meeting whatever owned such teeth. "One half green dragon, one half blue, hated by both."

"Dragons may be the strongest creatures on Toril," Oceanus said from Riyaz's back as he tightened the rearranged harness—it looked a little like…a saddle?—and Blade almost bit him, "but they have the same prejudices as humans." He tightened the last strap and slid down Riyaz's back as the dragon closed his eyes and shook himself. The leather didn't budge.

Altaïr didn't say anything. He knew better than to try and pry this mess apart—it wasn't his business. He knew what it was like to be hated by both sides of his heritage, but he wasn't about to pour his heart out to a forty-foot flying lizard.

"It should be secure." Oceanus muttered, grabbing his and Altaïr's packs and stowing them in a pouch under Riyaz's sternum. Ash climbed into a different pouch under his belly, curling into a huge furry ball. Blade disappeared in a burst of gray mist that swirled around them, and then there were only three of them standing there.

It took some convincing, but eventually Altaïr managed to steel himself for the idea of flying on the back of a giant magical lizard. Riyaz pulled his tail out of the water and allowed Oceanus and Altaïr to climb onto his back from there.

Normally, Altaïr would have insisted on sitting in front to take the reins and have Oceanus hang on, but this was no horse, and there wasn't any way to force Riyaz to do anything if he didn't feel like it. And even if Altaïr had entertained the delusion that controlling a dragon was even half of a good idea, he didn't have the slightest idea how. So, as Riyaz began to turn and the assassin realized he was preparing to take off at a run, Oceanus sat in front, closest to the base of Riyaz's neck.

And sidesaddle, for some utterly incomprehensible reason.

"Altaïr, have you ever flown before?" Oceanus asked as Riyaz began to speed up from a walk that covered more distance in three steps than most people could jog in the same amount of time, to a trot that was faster than most horses at a canter.

"No." Altaïr said, trying to avoid saying something like, "of _course_ I have never flown before, you idiot!" He was pretty sure the priest was trying to help. Maybe.

Oceanus poked him in the shoulder and Altaïr felt a rush of warmth flood his body. Blinking, he turned back to the priest, who was regarding him with a strangely calm look. "Did you feel that?"

"What was it?" he asked, rubbing his arm. "It was…like new blood. Like fire in my veins."

Oceanus shrugged. "It was a spell for protection against the cold air up there." He jabbed a finger skyward. "Otherwise you might freeze to death."

"I see." And he hadn't asked about the fact that he'd been given thicker clothes and extra layers thereof, or the fact that his normal gloves and hood and boots had all been replaced with different articles of clothing that would stand up better to the bitter cold.

Oceanus didn't seem to be wearing half as much, but maybe that could be chalked up to the fact that he was a foot shorter than Altaïr was and much, much, smaller overall.

Riyaz's huge head turned to face them, pivoting on that massive neck, and he said calmly, "We should be able to travel thirty miles in an hour. It may take us up to three days to get out of Yttress's territory."

"And after that, you should head to Lumina." Oceanus suggested. "We can walk or join up with a caravan."

Riyaz shrugged and nearly threw both of them off when the muscles connected to his huge wings shifted. "Ah, sorry." He thought about what Oceanus said and replied placidly, "I might end up taking you up on that offer…"

Oceanus rolled his eyes and pulled his scarf up over his nose. "If you ever wanted to scare Yttress off, you could always just…"

"That is for another time." Riyaz interrupted, and this time he really _moved_. It was like being jolted continuously, or like trying to sit on a wave. The dragon's body rocked and he moved like a huge, scaled cat and pounded along the soft marsh earth, causing both of his passengers to grip the edges of the saddle for dear life, but then they were going up, up, and up…

It settled, a bit, after the first wing-beats. Then there was just the sensation of _freedom_.

And bitter, bitter cold.

* * *

"It _moved_?" the shadowed sorcerer shrieked, outraged.

His two employees, amused, merely nodded.

"_How_?"

"We have no idea!" said the female, quite cheerfully. "Teleportation always seems like an option, but then your prize might be splattered across three kingdoms!"

"_Listen_, you…you." Apparently, there was still an edge of fear in the air. He couldn't afford to insult them. "I already promised to give you everything I had for this…"

"So you did," the male remarked. "That is not enough."

"Then what is?" the sorcerer demanded. "The archmages in Luskan and Neverwinter already conspire against me, and I have no other options!"

The male rolled his shoulders. "When we track this device down, use it to destroy your enemies. Bring Luskan to its knees. But after that…"

"We _own_ you," the female finished happily.

"I…" He didn't have any other options that presented themselves as good ideas. He'd made too many enemies, killing everyone who had ever gotten in his way. And now he faced two monsters who couldn't be negotiated with or destroyed without dying in the process.

Miserable or not, he liked living. More importantly, he liked his heart where it was.

He swallowed. "I…I agree."

Two sets of fanged grins. "_**Good**_."

* * *

Six hours later, on the ground, Altaïr decided to ask about something that had been bugging him ever since he'd first heard that strange woman talk, "What does "_Orn vur aujir darastrix dartak yth_" mean?"

Oceanus, who had been busy trying to brush dried mud out of Ash's thick fur, looked up and said with a frown, "Where did you hear that?"

Altaïr glanced at Riyaz, who seemed to be sleeping less than ten feet away. "It just came up."

Oceanus looked at Riyaz, too, and said, "It means, roughly, "Silver and bronze dragons hate us." I think it might have been a proverb, if there was a better Common translation for it. Or just advice." He gestured at the mountains that had appeared in the distance about an hour ago, visible through the swamp fog. "The further we head that way, the more territories Ro is going to end up crossing. If he stays too long, a lot of dragons are going to be very, very angry at him."

"What dragons live in the mountains?" Altaïr asked.

"Silver and red, both of which will probably attack Ro for being here." Oceanus said, starting to pry the mud out from behind Ash's ears with a bone comb. It snapped. "Damn." He stuck the pieces back in his pocket and added, "Well, bronze, copper, and black dragons are more likely to live around here. Some of them might live in the foothills, or they might be trying to edge in Yttress's territory or something."

"Yttress is a dragon." Altaïr said flatly. It wasn't even a question, really. He knew.

Oceanus shook his head. "And if you met her face-to-face, it would be even more obvious. She has horns growing out of the sides of her head."

"Horns." Right. Because there hadn't been any way for this journey to get any stranger.

"Even when she pretends to be human." Wait, yes there was. It could have only gotten weirder if _every person they'd met_ wasn't human. Arrgh. "Even so, it is probably for the best that you did not. I imagine that your world disapproves of her making corpses walk."

Altaïr felt like beating his head against a wall.

Ash yawned, his long tail lashing and splattering them all with mud.

* * *

**A/N:** And that ends part 6 for now.

Tethyr: the mostly-landlocked region north of Calimshan (which is a little like a cross between the Middle East and Muslim Spain) and east of Amn (think 15th-century Italy). Has issues with both, and pirates. Seems to contain the Snowflake Mountains only because no one else cares enough to fight them for it.

Druid: one of the two most powerful D&D core classes, the other being an optimized cleric. Always involves nature worship—usually of Chauntea or Silvanus.

_Thric pothoc_ = Draconic for "I'm not _stupid_."

Teleporting when impaired (in _any_ way) usually results in getting tele-_fragged_.


	7. Waiting on the World

**Chapter Seven: Waiting On The World**

**A/N:** School sucks.

* * *

Maybe it was the fact that he'd never tried talking to someone through a portal when the other person was underwater, but Keras sat back, frowning a little even as Cadderly started to adopt the kind of look most people reserved for demons and other unpleasant surprises. Still, he said plainly, "So, can I trust you to put the others on alert?"

Vivid green eyes, framed by a curved, bronzed face and hair so dark it was nearly black, narrowed at him. When she spoke, her voice was warped and garbled. "Even for Zahara's youngest son, you ask much of me. Perhaps too much. Many of these lines of contact have not been used in centuries."

"That's your own fault." Keras pointed out, his voice mild. "You and my mother and everyone else who made it possible for things to get as bad as they did. Even the boss lady, really."

Her frown became even more severe. "Do not take that tone with me. It is even more unacceptable coming from one such as you."

"Too bad," Keras said coolly. "Maybe I'm not old enough or experienced enough to stand up to you or the old lady in a fight. That's fine. It's _not_ okay that you're willing to let things like random fireball attacks happen all over Faerûn just because you've gotten into fights with your old war buddies."

"Why does this concern me?" she asked, her voice cold.

Keras's teal eyes slid sideways and he didn't look directly at her. "Well, regardless of who's behind these attacks, he _is_ your son."

She froze. Her hair drifted with the currents that had suddenly strengthened on her side of the transmission spell.

"So, you can hope that this fiery rain passes just like every other looming cataclysm in our history, probably maiming and killing just like the Time of Troubles did years ago," Keras said quietly, "or you can be proactive for once."

"The Time of Troubles was the result of actions taken by the gods Bane and Myrkul, not any idiocy of mortal hands," she pointed out, cautious. "The fabric of our world is weak now, in the years since Mystra's death. Could it be wild magic?"

Keras refused to back down. "We don't know if this is a sign of something worse—not even Bahamut is willing to answer, not now—but since when has it been a bad idea to be alert?"

She hesitated. "You still ask me to reopen alliances with those who stopped being allies several centuries past."

"Again," Keras said, "that's really only because you all drifted apart. There might not have been a lot holding the ten of you together in the first place, but you fought alongside each other for a long, long time. Maybe you don't owe anything to people like that, but I think you might be able to at least guilt a few of them into looking into a potential threat like this."

"…I will consider it," the woman murmured distractedly, running her fingers through her hair. "Though I make no guarantees. I cannot leave my domains for anything short of the apocalypse. I refuse to let the sahuagin claim them again. "

"I wouldn't ask you to." Keras said. "But the old woman can't find and persuade everyone on her own. My mom is already warning most of the family on my end. That's not enough, though.

"Whether Lumina even cares about this or not, I'm worried." Keras admitted. "It might be wild magic. It might be the second coming of the Tiamat. That's not the point. But we don't have enough eyes to keep track of everything.

"Hells, the _Many-Starred Cloaks_ have more agents than we do, and they only work for Neverwinter! One city, where we have to watch the entirety of Faerûn! We have a big, fat hole in our information network and half the people we both know could be in trouble, since those fireballs seem to be targeting cities and ships we know we have allies in and on."

He took a deep breath. "Please, Lady Immersa. You're the only one who can protect everyone we both care about. Without you, they might die."

Immersa winced. "I…"

"I don't even care if you call Sinya, no matter what he's done over the years." Keras went on roughly, his voice cracking. Immersa jerked back as though struck. "Or Miakûl, or Yttress, or whoever you think can help. Hells, even knocking on Radon's door might do some good. He may see only as far as the peaks of Celestia allow, but the idea of not using all the help we can get…"

"…Everyone knows that my husband's clan controls most of the mountain ranges around the Faerûnian heartlands." She didn't seem like she was paying attention to him anymore. "…I wonder if my aunt is still living near the Sea of Fallen Stars…and there is always Fith, I suppose…"

Keras snapped his fingers and Cadderly ended the spell, as agreed.

The priest was frowning severely. "I almost feel as though being privy to your machinations will draw their wrath down on me, as well."

Keras laughed. "The trick is making it seem like it was all their idea."

"Given her reaction, it was almost as though…" Cadderly trailed off, staring. "You did that all on purpose? Throwing her off her thoughts?"

"Well, it helps to know what buttons to press." Keras agreed. "Get them to react before thinking, and then you've got them."

Cadderly sighed. "Truly, we live in dark times. That a man younger than myself would think like this…"

Keras shot him a brilliant grin. "Well, even manipulating them is really for the greater good. It's not like they'd be much use to anyone just sitting on their asses like they were." He paused. "And anyway, now she'll probably send warnings to damn near everyone in Faerûn that she actually knows, which should get the message even further since they're pretty much all huge gossips. Then, the next thing you know, it even gets back to my boss in a kind of backwards kind of way."

"Still, it is not the road I would have taken." Cadderly said. He paused. "You mentioned Sinya, and that name seemed to startle her badly. Who is she?"

"He," Keras corrected immediately, standing. "Sinya is her husband, and the bastard responsible for all of this."

"How so? You just said that you had no idea who was responsible for the fireball attacks." Cadderly pointed out.

Keras waved a hand dismissively. "Not that. He'd never use fire anyway. When I said everything was his fault, I mean that most of the personal tragedies of people I know—both good _and_ evil people—can be traced back to him."

Cadderly blinked and waited for further elaboration, but Keras walked off without at second glance at the priest.

* * *

Altaïr was lying back in the boughs of a massive tree, staring up at unfamiliar but still beautiful stars overhead. There wasn't a single constellation he recognized. He couldn't lose himself in stargazing like he had once, long ago, not when the skies were so alien that it brought home the fact that he was so very far from home. The moon was a huge, bright circle in the sky that made it almost easy for the assassin to see all of his companions below.

Riyaz yawned, giving Altaïr an excellent view of his massive, crooked teeth and misshapen yaw. Since they had left the foggy swamps a day before, the mottled dragon hadn't said anything in any language the assassin could understand, though Oceanus would sometimes talk to him for hours. Ash would sit next to Altaïr, sensing his frustration, but still seemed to understand the conversations better than he did.

Then Riyaz abruptly swung his huge, terrible head around and looked the assassin in the eye. Altaïr found himself staring down, into dark eyes nearly the size of his fist. Almost unnoticed, Oceanus appeared from Riyaz's other side, frowning slightly.

"Altaïr, we are going to be traveling on foot starting tomorrow," the priest said, pulling his scarf from over his mouth.

Altaïr frowned as well. While flying astride a fifty-foot dragon was certainly uncomfortable at times, the assassin couldn't deny that they were making good time to wherever they were headed. Traveling on foot would probably be a severe delay. "Why?"

Oceanus gave Riyaz a significant look, white eyebrow raised and all, and the dragon tilted his head and spoke softly. "My form attracts far too much attention, and there are several groups in the Snowflake Mountains who will find it a convenient excuse to attack me. I do not want to hurt anyone here."

Altaïr said nothing, only nodded.

Oceanus sighed. "It should be fine. After all, if I remember correctly, Hokiide manages a tower in this region somewhere. We can ask if he can teleport us the rest of the way."

Riyaz merely inclined his head in acknowledgement before giving another yawn and curling into a massive, lazy loop with his head tucked along the inside edge of the end of his blunt tail. Oceanus climbed over the wall created by Riyaz's body and promptly threw himself down with their supply packs, starting to prepare their evening meal and setting up bedrolls with uncanny efficiency.

Altaïr shrugged mentally and leaned back against the tree to wait. Oceanus had dismissed his help more than once when it came to preparing food at night, even though the priest seemed to have trouble lighting campfires. Ash sat nearby, barking and nosing around happily.

Altaïr heard Riyaz speak in a hissing murmur, but didn't bother to try and interpret it. Over the past two days, the assassin had quickly come to the realization that Oceanus and Riyaz simply didn't want him to know what they were talking about. He supposed that unless he heard his own name mentioned, it was probably nothing he had to be immediately concerned about.

Altaïr and Oceanus ate in silence, with Ash devouring any scraps they tossed him. Riyaz had apparently bitten several branches off a peach tree a hundred miles back and called it a meal, or at least that was what he said when Altaïr asked him later why he didn't eat. Other than that, Altaïr was starting to notice that Oceanus ate quite a bit more than he did, though no one seemed inclined to offer any sort of explanation.

Riyaz put out the fire by stomping it flat with one huge forepaw once they were finished. As Ash curled up into a massive furry ball on top of the embers, Altaïr felt his way back to his bedroll and crawled under the heavy woolen blankets. Oceanus gave an audible yawn and collapsed onto his own bedding, pausing only to yank his boots off.

"Good night, everyone," the priest mumbled halfheartedly; he got only grumbles and grunts in response.

What seemed like an hour later, Altaïr was still awake, staring up at the unclouded sky and watching his breath form little white clouds in the air. He could hear Ash snore and kick at the ground occasionally while in the grip of some dream, and Riyaz's heavy breaths could have collapsed a sand dune if they had still been in the desert. And the stars were still just as wrong as before. Maybe it was just that, just the sheer insanity of his situation with that one slice of madness on top that made him feel so utterly homesick.

He'd spent days, weeks, and sometimes a month or two on a single mission, cutting down the Assassins' enemies all across Syria. Sometimes he would have a single companion, such as a novice on a training run, but for the most part he was alone except for his horse. But even on the road a thousand miles from home in Masyaf, he'd always know that he _could_ go home. That somewhere, there were people who he viewed as family that he would defend with his life.

Damn everything, he even missed Abbas and his ill-timed backtalk and stubborn loyalty, and Malik and his acidic tongue and heart of gold, and, on some level, he even missed Al Mualim. And on some, slightly higher, level, Altaïr wanted to kick himself.

"Is something wrong?" Oceanus's voice asked sleepily, jerking the assassin out of his quiet contemplation of the night sky and subsequent mental rant.

Altaïr glanced over at the priest, who was rubbing his eyes and watching the assassin with eyes half-open. "It is nothing important."

Oceanus gave a sigh and said quietly, "You have not gone to sleep yet. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"I doubt it." Altaïr said, half to himself. "It has nothing to do with you."

"I doubt _that_." Oceanus muttered. "Is it that you want to go home?"

Altaïr said nothing, though he mentally winced. For someone who was half-asleep, the priest was oddly perceptive. More so than when he was awake, in any case.

"…I know the feeling." Oceanus said after a moment. "Perhaps not in the same way, but…"

Altaïr sighed. "You have never been trapped in a world not your own, where everything is so different from what you know that you know less than the average child, and are treated like such?"

Oceanus almost flinched. "I…"

"I hate being here." Altaïr pushed on mercilessly. He was tired, mentally and physically. He needed to find something familiar, some token. He needed to find something he could use to tell himself that the entire journey so far hadn't been just a terrible dream or a dying fantasy as Robert de Sable or some other enemy cut his heart out. Almost absently, he considered pulling out the Apple just to make sure that it was real, but decided against it. "It just seems so…so strange. Like it might be some kind of terrible sorcery that I cannot overcome."

After a long moment, where all Altaïr could hear was the sound of Riyaz breathing, "I…I should not have been so cold to you." Oceanus admitted in a nearly silent whisper.

"What?" Altaïr blinked.

"I am sorry." Oceanus said, his voice tight. Altaïr blinked, looking over at the priest, who was staring up at the strange sky. "I have not been the best guide, and I know that, but…it is difficult for me to understand people sometimes. And I can be cruel without thinking. Please, the next time this comes up, just ask. I will try to explain as much about this world as I can, even if you never consider it your own."

Altaïr said nothing, just staring at the priest.

"So, do you have anything you want to know at this exact moment?" Oceanus asked, still sounding rather odd.

Altaïr thought about it for a moment, then looked up at the alien sky that had taunted him before. "I…"

"Yes?" Oceanus murmured, apparently starting to drift off again.

"What is that star?" Altaïr asked at random.

Oceanus blinked and rubbed his eyes again. "Which one?"

"The bright one."

"The King-Killer Star." Oceanus replied. "It is only visible every few centuries, if that. Even then, it is not as bright as the scrolls say it will be."

"Is it important?"

Oceanus seemed to chew his lip. "It is too unreliable to navigate by, but it forms part of an elven constellation. There was also a sort of magic effect, called the Dracorage mythal, which was tied to the appearance of that star."

"I suppose that force is incredibly dangerous." Altaïr murmured.

"It broke the backs of the dragon empires thirty thousand years ago, during the Dawn Ages." Oceanus said quietly. There was a slight undercurrent of anger in his voice. "Every time the star became brightest, the mythal drove every dragon in the entire world completely mad, which is why the elven, dwarven, and human empires even exist today."

"Even Riyaz?" Altaïr asked, eying the huge, mottled beast cautiously.

"Even him, if he's even that old." Oceanus sighed. "But I think we have a few more weeks before it happens again. And we should have gotten you home by then, so I doubt you have anything to worry about."

Altaïr doubted that, but he changed the subject anyway. "What about that one?"

"The blue one?"

"Yes."

"From what I remember hearing from djinni Keras talked to, that seems to be another world. Toril is this one, and I have no idea what you call yours, but we call _that_ one Krynn. I wish I knew why."

Altaïr's tired mind latched onto the only familiar concept in that speech. "You have djinni too, then?"

"Mm-hm. Djinni are not exactly common, and only a few can grant wishes, but they can be interesting people to talk to. What are yours like?"

"They are powerful spirits, according to the old stories." Altaïr said after a moment. It had been a long time since he had heard any of the tales of Scheherazade that had to do with djinni, even if he had mentioned a few to Tahirah on the boat. "They were the spirits of air and wind, and would often sweep through the desert in deadly funnel clouds that could trap people and livestock and throw them for miles. There were stories of sorcerers who could capture them…"

Oceanus might have smiled. It was too dark to tell. "I imagine that the djinni never appreciated _that_."

"No." Altaïr felt the corners of his mouth curl up a little. "And I remember that sometimes they would kill whoever freed them out of sheer annoyance."

"Sounds like them." Oceanus remarked. "Do you have efreeti, too?"

"Fire-spirits, correct?"

"Right." Oceanus yawned. "I suppose our worlds _are_ similar."

"But not the same," Altaïr added.

"Of course," the priest yawned again and rolled over. "Now, _go to sleep_."

Altaïr sighed.

The world was quiet for about a minute, disturbed only by the sounds of his companions' breathing.

"Oceanus?"

"Mm?"

"…Thank you for explaining."

"Wha'ever…"

"Also, one more thing."

"Nmuh?"

"My world is called "Earth"."

"Int'resting. Shu' up and go t' sleep."

* * *

"I think you need to clarify something for me." Oceanus said a few days later, as they started traveling through the heavily-wooded area that seemed to be called the High Forest. For his part, Altaïr had never seen so much green in his entire life, but he was past caring about it. Until he tripped over it, anyway.

"What?" Altaïr asked, trying to avoid slipping on the mossy ground. Somehow, the plant life seemed to be conspiring against him.

Blade seemed to snicker.

Oceanus was about halfway up the next hill, following Ash's lead, when he finally said, "Is there supposed to be a difference between assassins, as in Artemis Entreri, and Assassins like you?"

Altaïr wasn't quite sure if he was supposed to take offense or not. Just going from what he had seen and heard, Entreri was, frankly, a complete and total violation of almost everything that defined the Creed. The entire point of the Brotherhood, as far as Altaïr understood, was to defend the citizens of the world from the Templar attempts to subjugate every person in their path. To keep them from destroying the free will of mankind.

And he annoyed the Syrian assassin practically down to his bones.

Since Altaïr had apparently paused for slightly too long to think about it, Oceanus went on, "And the only thing that makes Entreri different than a common Calimport thug is his skill. If you talk to dedicated stealth experts, he lacks…what was it again…subtlety."

So did the Brotherhood, but no one had complained about it so far.

"The Brotherhood of Assassins was formed to keep our people safe from Templar takeover. We never kill innocents and answer only to the Grandmaster." He paused. "It has been a very long time since we began fighting."

Riyaz, bringing up the rear, murmured. "How long?"

Altaïr glanced back. "Scholars keep track of the dates. I know that it has been over a hundred years at this point, though."

Riyaz tilted his head to one side. "This business between Assassins and Templars…is it a war?"

"Yes. But neither we nor the Templars fight wholly for one side." Altaïr sighed. "I was ordered to kill Templars in both Christian and Muslim armies. For all the good that it did."

"So, it was actually a four-sided war." Oceanus frowned. "Everyone moved on their own, but Templars and Assassins hid within the other two factions?"

Blade and Ash flanked the group as they walked under the boughs of a tree with needle-like leaves. Ash growled at something none of them could see, though Riyaz did turn his head to the left to acknowledge the dog.

"We fought a war within a war." Altaïr explained patiently. "Islam and Christianity were—_are_—religions at war. Each side views the other as infidels. Christians invaded what they called the Holy Land—our _home_—in the hope that they could reclaim the ancient city of Jerusalem as their own. It is the greatest city in their holy book. We fought back."

Riyaz made a mild, neutral kind of noise as he climbed over a massive tree root. "Hm…"

"We have religious wars, sometimes." Oceanus said. "But it usually happens between races, rather than among one race." He drew a circle in midair. "For example, we have the fact that the orcs and the elves both hate each other. And so do their gods—something about how Corellon Larethian made Gruumsh a cyclops. So, every time they fight, I suppose it might be called a religious war."

"Except with Faerûnian gods, you never know if the people hated each other first, or if their gods did." Riyaz put in. "It gets very confusing at times."

Altaïr blinked at both of them. "…I doubt anyone among the armies thought that way, exactly." Trying to get back on track, he added, "The Brotherhood itself is primarily composed of Muslims—Islamic people from all over Syria—but we do not serve Salah ad-Din directly. He is the Sultan who commands the Saracens—Muslim forces. Do you both understand so far?" Riyaz and Oceanus both nodded. "But despite the fact that we are Muslim, we serve the people. Not Salah ad-Din, and not any of his generals. We work to protect the ordinary people in the Holy Land from soldiers from both sides."

"It sounds kinder than it is." Oceanus remarked. "You still have to kill people."

"True, but we do not target those who refuse to raise a blade." Altaïr followed Oceanus around the trunk of a massive tree—apparently, the priest was following a game trail. "And as I see it, it is not impossible for Christians and Muslims to live together."

"What do Christians look like?" Oceanus asked curiously. "Are they any different than Muslims?"

Altaïr had to think about that—there had been Christians and Muslims of all types, he knew, but it seemed like he only ever saw the sharpest possible distinctions while hunting for a target. He wanted to kick himself for it. And then possibly Oceanus, but you couldn't punish someone for curiosity when ignorance was the other option.

"Most of the Christians in the Crusader army are from Europe." Altaïr said after a while, remembering Sibrand. Meanwhile, they passed by a freshwater spring that just so happened to be inhabited by crocodiles. Which made no sense, but then, Faerûn was a land of insanity. They avoided it. "They were from colder lands—they are much lighter-skinned than the people who lived in their Holy Land to begin with. I think many of the foot soldiers might be peasants or otherwise common workers, given how little training they had." He frowned. "Many of them died on the march, from the heat. I doubt most of them knew how to adapt to the desert before they made it to Constantinople."

Oceanus and Riyaz exchanged looks.

"What?"

The priest shrugged. "Nothing."

"…Except for the European Muslims who were driven from the continent, most of the Islamic peoples are desert-dwellers." Altaïr went on, "Kurds, Afghans, and so on along tribal lines. Calimshan natives would be rather similar in build and appearance, I think."

Riyaz had looked away, at a tree that seemed to be twisting its trunk to keep them in "sight." But that would be insane. He had apparently stopped paying attention entirely.

"So what are you?" Oceanus asked, following Ash as the beast trotted ahead happily. Blade had stayed back with Riyaz to growl at the tree. "I noticed that you are almost two hands taller than Entreri, even though he fights in a crouch and you were hunched over."

…_I am __**not**__ going to punch him._ "My mother was a Christian, my father a Muslim. Both were Assassins."

Oceanus paused. "Sorry."

"They died a long time ago. There is nothing to be sorry about."

"Still," the priest insisted. "It was insensitive of me to ask like that."

It wasn't like Altaïr was going to argue with that. "Yes, it was. But I forgive you."

"In return…" Oceanus took a deep breath. "My…_father_..." Altaïr did not miss the fact that the word was spat out like a bad taste, "…was born in Rashemen, I think. It is a region that is very, very far north, and it is overrun with animal spirits. They say he was raised by them, or possibly the witches whose covens run the country." Ash whined. "Mother is from Amn, which might explain her obsession with justice. The country is run by thieves and murderers."

"Not much different than most countries, actually." Riyaz remarked quietly. "At least the Shadow Thieves are honest about it…"

Oceanus rolled his eyes. "_Honesty_. As if it makes up for everything else. Just from memory, there are probably a dozen powerful factions—tied to a country or not—that have all earned a reputation for ruthlessness, evil, and general depravity."

Riyaz began to mutter under his breath. "The Red Wizards of Thay, the Zhentarim at Zhentil Keep, the Citadel of Assassins up in Vaasa, the resurgent Netherese, the Shadow Thieves of Amn, everyone who operates in Skullport…"

Well, they were certainly off topic now, whatever the topic was supposed to be. "I keep forgetting to ask—what are elves? Orcs?"

At least Oceanus didn't give him a look that said _What are you, stupid?_ "Orcs are…human-shaped, at least. But they are much, much larger in the shoulders and are built like tree trunks. I think they tend to be around six feet tall, even the women. Their skin is slightly green for some reason, and they have huge, square jaws. Most of them also have tusks. They tend to have short lives because they fight so often, but the stronger ones can break a man in half."

Altaïr tried to imagine that. He really did. It didn't work.

Oceanus caught the look on his face. "It would be easier to see them for yourself…"

"Ignore me. What about the elves?"

"Elves are the opposite of orcs." Oceanus said, as Riyaz seemed to finally tire of being in the back of the group and walked past them, still muttering. "They look relatively human, but they have small, slight builds. Elves tend to be around five feet tall, and they usually weigh a fraction of what a human of the same size would. They age extremely slowly—an elf that actually _looks_ like an adult would be over a hundred years old." He paused, thinking. "Elves have narrow faces and pointed chins, with no facial hair. And their ears are long and pointy."

"Would they happen to look anything like _that_?" Altaïr said dryly.

"Wha—?" Oceanus's head snapped up, and he saw Riyaz cautiously backing up, hands in the air. Blade and Ash were beside him, snarling every inch of the way. On the opposite edge of the clearing—but working their way around, quickly—was a group of the strange human-shaped beings Oceanus had been describing. Three of them had their bows trained on Riyaz, two on Oceanus and Altaïr.

"Wood elves." Riyaz murmured as he backed into them. "Eight, total."

"You should have said something!" Oceanus hissed at him, furious and embarrassed. Altaïr just sighed.

"You seemed busy…"

"You—!" He cut himself off. "You know what? Forget it. Just…damn it all."

"We _could_ still get away." Riyaz said quietly. "I could change and we could fly…"

"Shot full of holes, maybe." Oceanus grumbled back. "Feel like using the trees?"

An arrow clipped Oceanus's ear. Altaïr heard him start cursing viciously, hand clapped to the side of his head.

"No," said Riyaz.

Oceanus didn't answer because he was too busy grinding his teeth in frustration.

* * *

**A/N:** Hopefully the next chapter won't take so long to get up, but this is it for now. Villains and adventures will ensue soon enough, now that I have better plan for them.


	8. Set the World Ablaze

**Chapter Eight: Set the World Ablaze**

**A/N: **So…this is where it starts getting serious. After the first bit, anyway. ;)

Has anyone else noticed how huge the cast has gotten?

And does anyone really read these things?

* * *

Riyaz was less than surprised to find that there were elves in the High Forest—that was practically what it was _for_. Still, they were supposed to be prisoners, and if there was one role Riyaz had never had any trouble playing, it was "helpless prisoner."

The wood elves had tried to take Riyaz's scythe from him, but it had vanished from the lead elf's hand as soon as it left the druid's grip. There had been quite a bit of muttering about that, but nothing could be done—the elves seemed to understand that they would never find the weapon without a wizard or sorcerer in their group. Riyaz merely shrugged in response to the later query about where Blade had disappeared to, even after the male with black hair broke one of his fingers.

He wasn't going to be the one to betray his best friend. And broken fingers were _nothing_ compared to what he'd faced before. The elf didn't know who he was dealing with.

Oceanus had managed to fool them into thinking they'd managed to disarm him completely—after pulling seven daggers off him, it was a reasonable conclusion to make. Riyaz, however, knew that the other divine spellcaster carried twelve total, not counting whatever else he could find and strap to a belt. It always amazed Riyaz that Oceanus didn't clank when he walked.

As for Altaïr, they'd managed to strip him of his sword, dagger, and the knife belt (that didn't have any knives in it), but had probably forgotten something. Assassins, as far as Riyaz could remember, usually could kill almost as well with their bare hands, and Altaïr had the build for it. Riyaz had heard of dozens of elves, previously sure in their own strength, die once forced into extremely close range. He'd only _seen_ a drow killed that way, after making the mistake of assuming that "weaponless" meant "helpless" while her opponent was a fighting monk.

The audibly broken spine ensured that no one in the area would make _that_ mistake twice.

At a loss as to what else to do, the band of elves had simply decided to bind the lot of them and, as far as Riyaz could tell, hope for the best. They'd gagged Oceanus, though—apparently, the little priest was quite adept at cursing in their language, too.

From what he could understand from the elves' mindless chatter, they were supposed to be bringing the three of them (and Ash) to some kind of fey—given the environment, Riyaz guessed that the creature in question was either a dryad or a nymph.

Or possibly a pixie or sprite of some sort, but he doubted that even elves had much of a tolerance for the antics of such creatures.

Oceanus grumbled something furious—was he biting his gag? Riyaz was fairly sure the moss they'd used to shut him up was actually poisonous if swallowed, but it didn't seem like there was going to be any time to warn him.

The three of them were shoved into a clearing, though Oceanus fell on his face and Riyaz pointedly folded his legs under himself and sat down, rather than be forced to move any further. Altaïr stumbled a bit, and Riyaz thought he saw the start of a vicious kicking reflex that would have crippled the nearest elf and sickened the others, but the assassin managed to control himself. None of them were particularly interested in being shot full of holes.

The clearing itself was actually rather idyllic. There were full-grown, healthy old-growth trees around the edge of a clear pond. The entire area was sheltered by the ruins of an ancient, crumbling stone wall that had nonetheless done its duty. The very air seemed to hum with peace and magic, like many places in the elven heartlands.

Riyaz, who was getting a tension headache from all that senseless background buzzing, wondered if it would really be so much to ask that the elves tone down their magic use for five years or so. That kind of strain on a caster's sixth sense was _dangerous_.

Oceanus, more-or-less upright again despite still being tied up, gave him a sharp look. He was _still_ chewing on the gag.

_So, you can feel it, too?_ Riyaz thought.

Riyaz glanced around. The elves who had been prodding them along the forest path had backed away, and he could see them kneeling from the tree line. What were they doing, really? Elves didn't even bow to their own kings and queens if they could avoid it, so why…?

Riyaz looked back at the pond. The surface seemed to shift between placid and sparking in the sunlight, and twisting like milk in a cauldron. Riyaz blinked rapidly, making the image shift back and forth a dozen times over before breaking—illusions had never been effective against him for very long, and it seemed like this one was coming apart. It was all a matter of pulling at the threads and unraveling the lie…

…_It would be just our luck. We managed to find the __**one**__ place in the entire High Forest where the elves are being enchanted by a monster._

And, for a monster that had enthralled an entire scouting party's worth of elves, Riyaz found himself feeling rather underwhelmed. Ash seemed to growl in agreement.

It was a hag. Or rather, _she_ was a hag. Purple skin, stretched tight over her bones, was marked with heavy runic symbols that Riyaz had never learned to read. Her face was narrow and sharp, with a nose like a beak and a mouth full of yellowed, sharp teeth. The hag's hair was tangled and knotted tightly enough that the ornaments stayed in without help. Her hands and feet seemed almost too large for her, every digit ending in a claw.

Riyaz was fairly certain that he had coughed up scarier things while in dragon form. But while she certainly failed to intimidate _him_, he would have thought that someone would have said something by now. _And besides that, what is a night hag doing in the High Forest to begin with?_

And the elves were still bowing.

"_You are as beautiful as ever, my lady._" said the leader, in Elvish. He apparently hadn't taken into account that, as a matter of survival, most druids tended to speak it. Riyaz was no exception. "_We have captured the intruders, as you asked. Please, render your judgment upon these defilers of your grove."_

It still made no sense. The actual content of the speech was just the icing on the cake. _**What**_.

Oceanus and Altaïr were staring at the hag, surprised but not disgusted or showing any other emotion usually associated with seeing a hag for the first time. He glanced at the wood elves again. They weren't recoiling or attacking, either. So there was obviously an illusion at work, but Riyaz couldn't see it.

"_What do you see, assassin?_" Riyaz asked Altaïr, digging through long-ignored parts of his mind to find the right words in Calishite.

Altaïr gave him a sharp look, but he stopped himself from asking anything. "_A woman…but she looks more like an elf than a human…_"

_Nymph_. _But nymphs have their own abilities. Most of them happen to include doing horrible things to trespassers. "__**Look again**__._"

"_I…_" There was a pause. Then the assassin's expression changed to one of disgust and horror. "_What kind of creature is __**that**__?_"

He was about to explain the basics of hags to Altaïr, probably as quickly as possible, but she brought one hand down on the shore and made the earth quake under them both. Then she reached out and, before anyone could react, had grabbed Oceanus's ankle and pulled him underwater. Ash sprang to his feet and yowled in rage—as if by magic, the ropes binding his mouth began to rip and tear. He was probably going to end up in the water in short order.

Riyaz didn't bother looking at the elves, who had probably either fled or were otherwise being useless. Instead, while everyone was gaping, he started on his first trick.

_Onetwothreefour—SPIKE!_ A series of stone spines exploded out of the ground all around them, and Riyaz brought his bound wrists down over the nearest one. The rope shredded. Nearby, the assassin's wrist blade finally popped free and sliced through his bonds, and Ash had turned on the elves with fangs bared.

Then, just as they were about to leap to Oceanus's rescue or possibly revenge, the pond started to bubble. Riyaz skidded to a stop from his half-charge and grabbed Altaïr's right wrist to keep him from getting any closer.

The water's surface exploded, launching the pond's entire population of water-going life into the air. A gout of steam made seeing anything utterly impossible, and he had to shield his eyes to make sure the water wasn't going to hurt him as well. _Damn him, fighting like this… _Riyaz heard the assassin sputter after being hit in the head by a falling frog, but that was soon forgotten when both the priest and the hag became visible through the steam.

The priest was standing, barely, absolutely drenched in filthy pond water. He was panting for breath and needed Riyaz's help to climb out of the dry lakebed, but he was alive enough to mutter oaths about late reinforcements and human-shaped monsters. The hag was not. It looked like she had died in agony, and the smell drifting around the clearing was too horrible to describe.

Altaïr stared. He'd probably never seen a boiled corpse before.

Riyaz had. Rather than focusing on that, he said to Oceanus, "How could you be so stupid as to use lightning underwater?"

Oceanus spat out little scraps of black—the scorched and dried remains of the moss he'd been gagged with—and, after wiping his mouth off on his sleeve, said flatly, "What did you want me to do, try using _fire_?" He shook himself, sending tiny drops of water flying everywhere. "I just casted the first spell that came to mind. Not like I had time for much more than that…"

Riyaz wondered what he was supposed to do. One of the others—most likely Keras or Tirana, actually— might have decked Oceanus for being cheeky at the exact wrong moment, but Riyaz was never sure how to go about it without offending someone. Being violent toward a friend was something he had never thought he would have to even think about unless teleportation was involved. "I suppose…"

"When this is over," Altaïr bit out, drawing both of the casters' attention toward him, "I expect an explanation, priest."

Ash started growling again. Everyone turned to face the small band of elves, looking right down the shafts of several arrows. None of them appeared to be happy about the recent development—and, after looking around a little more, Riyaz could see why.

The entire clearing was a battleground—between the spell-damage from Oceanus's blast and the leftover residue from the hag's own magic, the pond and everything in a ten foot radius from it looked burned, blackened, and blasted. Huge chunks of the stone at the bottom had been blow or carved out and left massive craters in what was left. Dead and dying plants and animals were all around. On top of everything else, carved into the collapsed chunk of masonry, just above the scorch line of Oceanus's spell, was the symbol of Corellon Larethian, the elven high god.

As Riyaz resisted the urge to groan, Oceanus narrowed his eyes at the band of elves, who didn't yet seem to understand that they were utterly outclassed. "And as for them…"

Almost too fast to see, Oceanus and Riyaz both reached into their outer pockets. For safety's sake, adventuring mages needed to always be prepared for any eventuality. Both of them had fragments of turtle shells in their pockets; the sole component, besides knowledge, for casting a spell to deflect arrows. Two castings, one reappearing dire weasel, and one charging assassin later, the battle was on.

The first arrow bounced off of Ash's fur and was imbedded in a tree a moment later, just before all six hundred pounds of white canine landed on top of the party leader.

The second caught Blade in the shoulder, but the dire weasel was already so frenzied that all it did was slow him down. As the elf scrambled out of the way, Blade's vicious teeth caught the elf's bow hand. The hand and the bow didn't last long in jaws designed to tear apart cattle.

The third bounced off of empty air in front of Altaïr's nose, but the assassin reached his target with time to spare. A swift punch to the face cut short any attempts to nock another arrow, and, since he apparently wasn't quite sure if they were supposed to be killing the elves or not, Altaïr brought one heavy boot down on the elf's knee and heard a crunch. Then there was a lot of screaming.

Oceanus was a little more sadistic about it. All of the daggers the elves had taken off him, which the fifth elf was carrying, proceeded to explode out of packs and scabbards and sheathes like little silver comets. The priest held up his hands, which were glowing faintly blue, and the weapons spun around him in a circular orbit for a perhaps half a moment. Then, as Oceanus brought his hands down, the knives reversed direction in midair and then there was even more screaming.

Riyaz's scythe rematerialized in his hands. The familiar weight of the wooden weapon felt perfect in his hands, and a one-handed swing activated the polearm's magic. The scythe blade seemed to melt and reform from breath to breath, until it settled into the shape of a plain staff. Riyaz swung and cracked the nearest elf over the head.

The rest of the fight devolved into a melee.

Riyaz tapped into his druid powers, wild-shaping into a massive brown bear. He immediately threw himself at the nearest elf and smashed him into a tree with his huge paws. He wouldn't be getting up after that. One of the others tried to kill him the same way he would a normal bear—by shooting at his throat—and the arrow bounced away harmlessly. Druids were so in tune with their forms that they could cast powerful defensive spells even when in the form of an animal.

Oceanus actually jumped back to get out of the druid's way, hoping to stay out of melee range. The assassin was also forced to break off from his opponent when Riyaz barreled through and flattened him under a thousand pounds of angry bear. Ash and Blade protected the druid's flanks from any close-range fighters he couldn't deal with immediately.

"This is madness." Altaïr said as Riyaz batted an elf's head off. He almost winced.

Oceanus's voice was muffled—he was covering his mouth and looking ill. "_That_ is a druid."

It all blended together in blood and screams.

When Riyaz finally returned to human form, all of the elves were either critically wounded or already dead, and Oceanus was healing Ash's foreleg. None of them said anything about the carnage.

They took off running.

* * *

So, a drow and a human walk into a bar.

It was like the beginning of a joke.

It wasn't.

"Hm…" said the drow. She wasn't tall, even for a member of her race, but she had a female's stocky build, jet-black skin, yellow eyes that glowed red, and white hair, which made it impossible to identify her as anything other than one of those vicious dark elves. "Which one of you used to be on Captain Zahara's crew?"

The crowd—which was composed of hardened Skullport criminals, pirates, brigands, and ruffians of all types—flinched at the sound of that name. One of the drunks at the front gave the drow female a silly smile. The drow smiled back, and the only way it might have been more terrifying was if it had been carved into her face.

Skullport was, roughly speaking, the sort of place that even most creatures of the Underdark would rather not be found. Between the seven demiliches who ruled it as the floating skulls that gave the underground berth its name, the mind flayers, the drow, and the various other creatures of the dark, it was a singularly unpleasant place to be. The vast majority of the people were scoundrels, thieves, and murderers, or possibly slaves brought to auction off to whoever cared to keep them, but even they knew fear.

One of the reasons for their fear was smiling _down_—despite being shorter than everyone except for the kobold and goblin slaves—at them unpleasantly.

"I expect an answer, you know," the drow said, quite sweetly. The entire room cringed. "I come back into town after thirty years of good business and this is the thanks I get?"

"Well, I suppose even the scum of the Underdark have a limit when it comes to bloodshed," said her human companion, and all eyes finally focused on him. When a drow was in the building, particularly one with a reputation like hers, it wasn't safe to take one's eyes off it. But if a drow came into the building with a friend like _him_…

He was over a foot taller than she was, which was common for humans from the northlands. His eyes, though, were a brilliant crimson with cat-slit pupils. His hair was a dark red, almost auburn, and his skin was deeply bronzed. That wasn't what worried everyone, though. Their fear came from a long series of marks—jet-black stripes with green edges that glowed faintly even in such complete darkness—that ran from his left eye and down his neck before reappearing along his wrists.

Dragon-born symbols were common among some sects on the surface, but in the Underdark, they were few. Still, the more educated ones recognized it. Shadow dragon symbols were common enough, particularly during the short time that Shimmergloom had ruled Mithral Hall. _Tarterian_ dragon ones were not.

And then there was the slight problem that, while his drow companion barely appeared in infravision, he _blazed_ with heat.

"Dear Raaze, it seems our old friends have forgotten us!" said the drow, batting her eyes at him.

"How terrible, my sweet Rime." Raaze said, looking flippant but sounding annoyed. The denizens of the tavern tried to look inconspicuous, even the few drow patrons. "I wonder if we will need to fix that…"

"Well, I will ask one more time," said Rime in a terribly cheerful voice. "I know that one of you has worked for her before!"

Just then, someone stupid walked in. It probably wasn't a charitable thing to think of a half-demon, half-orc in a lousy mood, but there was nothing else they _could_ think.

"Get out of the way already!" he snarled at the smaller pair of beings, who looked back at him curiously. "No one needs dumb bastards like you to block the damned doors!"

The pair exchanged looks.

"Did he really say that?" Rime asked, as though confused.

"Did he really call us that?" Raaze asked back, rather than answering.

"Move!" the half-demon finally shouted, having lost all patience. He went to shove the human, but was quite surprised to find that his huge, clawed hands had been replaced by bleeding stumps. The pain took a moment to register.

"Quite interesting." Raaze said, sheathing a sword no one had seen drawn in the first place. A moment later, the formerly confident thug was on the floor with his feet sailing through the air without him. "It seems that half-demons scream just as well as anyone. I propose further experimentation."

"Oh, what a wonderful idea!" Rime purred, "But we still need information, dear Raaze."

"What in the Nine Hells did you do to him?" said someone from inside the tavern.

"Him?" As one, the pair turned to regard the pair of scrags—sea-trolls—that had spoken with identical looks of innocent curiosity on their faces. Everyone in the tavern cringed.

"Oh, that was just fun." Rime said dismissively over the sound of the half-demon wailing in pain. "He should regrow his limbs eventually."

"Or is it trolls that regenerate?" Raaze remarked. "Should we test it?"

Rime's ever-present grin widened. "I do believe so! Maybe someone in here will tell us what they know if we use thumbscrews!"

One of the realities of the Underdark was this: once a murderer in Skullport had decided you were his next target, there was no convincing him or her otherwise. The only option was to fight back and hope you won. Raaze and Rime were both notorious in Skullport for one reason and one reason alone—their rampages. Anything could set either of them off, and if one was annoyed, the other usually followed suit.

And each of them was more dangerous than any band of drow or squad of duergar, and they both knew it.

It was Skullport. Everyone was a monster. None of them were redeemable. And yet, no one in the tavern had actually done anything to anger Raaze and Rime in particular, except maybe existing. They were just targets. And despite being evil in every sense of the word, not one of them wanted to end up as a little black mark at the center of the blasted craters the pair tended to leave behind.

Maybe the demiliches would punish the pair later for their acts today. But it wouldn't be fast enough.

The kobold slave named Pataki, who had seen this pair once before and knew the danger signs better than anyone else in the building, scrambled over the nearest table and jumped out the window.

Rime threw herself at the pair of trolls in the back of the tavern with a shriek of glee.

Trolls usually died quickly or not at all—their regenerative abilities made them difficult or impossible to defeat except by those who were prepared to deal with their powers—but it seemed like Rime had foreseen that. She spat in the first one's face, and where her spittle struck him his flesh began to sizzle.

"Acid!" shrieked someone in the rear, and Raaze tossed a fireball in his direction.

Soon the entire tavern was engulfed in flame and fighting, as those inside fought desperately to escape.

Rime laughed.

* * *

As they made their way through the High Forest, eventually the trees began to clear out and the going became much easier. There were no more ancient oaks to grow roots over what might have been a road in another lifetime, so they had to take fewer detours. But as they walked, the Assassin began to notice that Oceanus and Riyaz and their respective animal companions were silent more often than not.

That…that wasn't how it was supposed to be. He'd never admit it aloud, but Altaïr had gotten used to the constant stream of chatter over the last week or two, and the idea of Oceanus, of all people, actually being quiet was a disturbing one.

Still, it didn't seem to be a problem that could be addressed easily. So he waited until night fell.

Rather than curling around them like a massive earthen wall, Riyaz remained in his human form, borrowed a bedroll from Oceanus, and immediately flopped over on the ground. Well, that certainly made sorting out who took which watch easier. Ash and Blade made a point to sleep on opposite sides of the fire Altaïr had started, each staring the other in the face.

Oceanus sat down against one of the few trees in the area, staring up at the stars. He didn't bother getting his second blanket out—apparently, the priest wanted the first watch. He and the Assassin sat in awkward silence for a while, neither willing to speak first and disturb the other.

Altaïr hated it.

So he heard himself say, "I never asked...how is it that you two know each other?"

Oceanus glanced over at him—as usual, Riyaz took point and Blade was the rear guard—and shrugged. "Took you long enough to ask."

And once again, he was being brushed off. This time, however, Altaïr knew what to expect. If Oceanus wasn't yelling, he hadn't hit a truly sore issue for the priest. Not yet.

"You were unconscious," was the Assassin's retort.

"So I was." Oceanus conceded. It struck the Assassin as strange that the priest was so calm when he was sure he could have string a lute with his own nerves. "What do you want to know?"

Altaïr went for the kill. "How did you and Riyaz meet?"

"He tried to kill me." The answer wasn't one he had expected. And yet Oceanus was so damnably calm… The priest shrugged again, as though attempted murder was an everyday occurrence.

Then again, it might have been. Altaïr was starting to realize just how little he knew about the world he was in.

"We were defending a noble. Back then, I was traveling with Keras and Alena, and we were young and stupid enough to think we could do anything. Bodyguard duty—we needed the money." Oceanus's expression was unreadable in the dark, but Altaïr could hear the snort of disdain from where he sat. "The first night there, everyone in the castle was slaughtered. We woke up to screaming, but we were too late to save anyone, even the servants. Some of them were younger than I was!"

Altaïr stayed silent.

"We ran into the noble's bedchambers just as the murderer was cutting his head off. I was slower—I got a look at his face under the hood." Oceanus shifted as though he was uncomfortable. "Of course we attacked—we were stupid and young and _angry_. He smashed Keras through the bed and the scythe nearly cut Alena in half. I was just thrown into the wall."

"Sounds unpleasant," the Assassin said mildly, but his mind was working quickly. Riyaz…he'd once had the power to slaughter an entire castle. He'd probably killed more than fifty people in one night. Without anyone noticing. No wonder he had said that he and Altaïr were similar…

"I broke three ribs." Oceanus said, his voice dull. "And when I looked up, he was standing over me."

Altaïr tried to remember a time—_any_ time—where he had been completely at someone's mercy when he _knew_ they meant to kill him. He couldn't.

"It might be easier to show you, actually…" Oceanus glanced at him. "Do you mind if I create an illusion for us? Ash can keep watch in our place."

"What will it make me see?" Altaïr asked. _I need to remember to ask how he can use this sorcery at all…_

"Just another time, another place." Altaïr did _not_ like the smile Oceanus was giving him. It was utterly false. "It should only take a moment."

_Yes._ Altaïr had to stop at his own thought, trying to figure out why he'd agreed at all. He needed to find out, yes, but by giving his senses and mind over to someone else's control? It was a fool's venture. But it was also necessary. And there was only so long you could go on arguing with yourself, in any case. "Yes."

Oceanus snapped his fingers, and the world flew away.

_It was dark. That was the first thing Altaïr realized. It was much darker than even being outside next to the sleeping Riyaz and Ash and it seemed that it was because at least, outdoors would have meant that the moon could have helped. _

_Then there was the smell of blood, the coppery scent hitting his noise like a sledgehammer. It set him on edge like nearly nothing else could, and lightning crashed nearby, setting the scene in harsh relief. Dead man—there, on what remained of an oaken Christian bed. Someone stirred in the rubble, groaning. Against the opposite wall—a little girl left completely limp, propped up only by a broken footstool. And there, cloak and hood thrown back, stood the one who had killed every breathing thing in the castle._

_And in front of him, staring up in undisguised, raw terror, was a slightly younger version of Oceanus._

_The little doppelganger coughed—his hand came away bloody. The murderer, moving slowly as though he was trapped in a similar dream, went to one knee in front of the boy. He put his hand—every finger dripping blood—on the younger boy's head. _

_And as the boy's hair ran red and he flinched back with nowhere to go, Altaïr saw the spark. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed, and the bolt flew in through the window and arced up the madman's arm._

_Heat, light, blinding—!_

_But the Assassin could still see, still saw the tiny priest scream and throw his arms out wide. And the killer—Riyaz; there was no mistaking that face or those eyes—was blown off his feet and through a solid oak desk by the power of his own summoned energy._

_Then there was movement—the little girl from before, radiating power like heat—rushing, weaving, thrashing—and the murderer who would be who Riyaz was now slammed into a stone wall. Then through it. The Assassin even saw each stone crumble._

_There was still screaming. The storm went on._

"Altaïr, are you still with me?" Oceanus's voice was lower than the illusion-memory. The Assassin blinked rapidly to clear his vision, only to find himself looking up at the priest's concerned face. He sat up.

"That was possibly the worst experience of my life." Which was a lie—al Mualim's betrayal was entire orders of magnitude worse—but Oceanus didn't need to know that.

"It was just an illusion." Oceanus said dismissively. "You could probably manage to see through it if it had lasted any longer."

_That monster!_ "I saw through the…woman's appearance before." Altaïr put in.

"Huh," said Oceanus. "Before or after Riyaz mentioned it?"

"After."

Oceanus nodded to himself. "Once you know there is an illusion, you can break it. Even people who choose swords over magic can do it."

There seemed to be a sort of implied insult there, but Altaïr ignored it. "How does magic work? Are there…branches? Styles? I need to understand if I will fight alongside you effectively."

That got a bit of a reaction from the priest—a momentary blank look. Then the priest launched into what Altaïr had always called "lecturing tone" behind his masters' backs.

Apparently, there were two basic branches of magic; arcane and divine. From there, it just got more complicated.

Arcane magic was divided into schools based upon the type of effects a given spell had. These ranged from evocation, which involved shooting fireballs from the caster's fingertips, to enchantment, which undermined a target's free will for one reason or another. The arcane magic was entirely centered the caster, though there were several different sources even with that qualifier—sorcerers got their power from their nonhuman blood (which was something Altaïr was _sure_ was going to give him headaches for a week) and usually weren't as versatile as the second type. Wizards gained their power from study and rituals, and they usually had fewer spells but more variety.

Divine magic was easier to understand, since it was power granted by the gods. The only problem with that was the multiple ways to access it. Priests prayed directly to the gods and usually only used spells that the particular god's domain happened to allow. Druids prayed to nature gods specifically, and their power manifested as control over nature and shapeshifting powers. Because either could call on the gods for backup, Oceanus seemed to give the general impression that he thought of divine magic as stronger.

And then there was a brief mention of something called psionics and something else involving people called warlocks and demon-summoning, but by then Altaïr was too tired to care. Oceanus had possibly the worst teaching method he'd ever even heard of, short of shoving the newest apprentices off cliffs.

And they weren't saying anything more about that.

"Spirit Soaring…what is it like?" Altaïr asked after a while.

Oceanus shrugged. "I do not know. I have never been there, though I have heard the rumors. It used to be a library, I think."

"Why a library?" Altaïr asked.

"I have no idea. I suppose someone liked books." Oceanus said. He shifted uncomfortably.

They fell silent again.

Riyaz yawned and rolled over. Oceanus glanced at him until he finally sat up, blinking at them both somewhat irritably.

"You two are too loud." Riyaz informed them.

"Really," said Oceanus.

"Yes."

"Then what do you have to contribute?" Oceanus asked, changing the subject entirely.

Riyaz sighed. "You _do_ realize that I will need to return to Yttress eventually, right?"

Oceanus paused. "Well, yes, but—"

"And she will be very, _very_ angry once she realizes that I disobeyed her orders." Riyaz continued quietly, as though Oceanus hadn't said anything.

"…oh."

Altaïr said nothing. He was the only one among them who hadn't met the strange woman, but it didn't take any experience to know that Riyaz was afraid of her. And if not her, then the things she could do to him. It amounted to the same thing most of the time, but the Assassin got the impression that Yttress's threat came mostly from the creatures she was willing to use against anyone who irritated her.

"It was going to happen regardless of if you were there or not." Riyaz said, but he failed to be reassuring. His voice was too flat and tired. "I would rather not dwell on it."

How was it that every attempt _any_ of them made to bring up a conversation tonight fell completely flat?

Altaïr gave it up as a bad job all around and decided that the two glowering animals—Ash and Blade, who still hadn't ended their staring contest—could take over the night's watch for him. He settled down to sleep.

* * *

"…and that's why we aren't allowed within a hundred miles of Neverwinter." Keras concluded cheerfully. "To this day, Oceanus insists it wasn't his fault, but everyone else knows better."

"How did you start a fight with the ranger, again?" Danica asked, having been somewhat sidetracked by the thief's rapid account of two days spent in one city. The idea that so much trouble could be caused by five people was…well, awe-inspiring was the wrong word, but it was certainly impressive.

"Well, see, he started trying to charm Tirana, but then we started noticing this one other woman getting testy. And then there was the whole bit where everyone swears I was blind drunk the whole time and I've always been a fairly strange one as drunks go…" Keras grinned. "Somehow, I ended up breaking his nose! Everyone said it was for the best, though—if I hadn't, Alena would have done something and then maybe the tavern would have caught fire. As it was, someone got thrown out a window even if we can't remember who or what for."

"But what does that have to do with being banned from an entire city?" Cadderly wondered.

"I have no idea!" Keras said brightly. "But after we were all thrown out, someone got it into their head to start a fight with the Neverwinter Academy and all the little mini-wizards tried to get in our way. It was probably Oceanus's fault—he never liked mages much and I'm pretty sure Alena was the designated sober one that night." He shrugged. "And then there was the bit with the sorceress who tried throwing fireballs at Alena and Oceanus…wow, was _that_ ever a bad idea. We almost didn't manage to pry Alena off her in time."

"I would have to wonder exactly how much ale one would have to drink before getting _that_ drunk." Danica observed dryly. She sighed. "Really, do you even have discipline?"

"Not at all." Keras replied, balancing a knife on the edge of his finger. He was still smiling. "I'm a thief and a bruiser, remember? I'll leave the whole discipline things to monks like you. You seem to know what to do with it."

Danica groaned. "You really are incorrigible."

Cadderly patted her shoulder sympathetically.

Strangely enough, the odd young man was one of their longest boarders. Where Drizzt and his friends had only stopped by once, in order to get that mess of a prophecy sorted out, and the dwarf pair lived in the temple like nearly everyone else, Keras was a mystery.

He hadn't stolen a single trinket from the temple, for all his declarations of being a rogue and a scoundrel with enough greed for two people. He generally looked after the place almost as well as they did, and mentioned his old friends and adversaries easily. He knew strange beings who claimed power beyond that of ordinary mortals.

And, for some reason, he worked for the Golden Lady.

No one knew all that much about the strange figure in the north. It was known that her name was Lumina, for all that helped, and that she had been a silent power along the Spine of the World for over two hundred years. No one even knew what race she belonged to.

"After a while, Lord Nasher finally said if the all of us were going to cause that much trouble we might as well do it where it could do some good. And so, we got thrown out into the wilds to fight orcs for a while. He issued a formal decree later." Keras explained. He chuckled. "The weird part is that only two of us were all that drunk to begin with. The girls and Riyaz were almost entirely sober that night."

"I hate to cut story time short," Cadderly said after a moment or two, "but the children need their sleep." He cracked his back. "In fact, so do I."

"I guess you're still not used to the whole being young again thing, huh?" Keras said sympathetically. "Speaking of, I never asked you how you could do that." Keras tilted his head to the side, as though thinking about it.

"It was an honor to serve Deneir." Cadderly said, smiling serenely. "Though it was also very generous of our lord to grant me my youth again, in small steps."

Keras looked like he was going to say something regarding how the priest had managed to sire twins during any point of said advanced aging process, but decided against it. He had very expressive stares. "I'll take your word on that…"

* * *

Elsewhere still, someone landed on their head. After a dazed moment or two, the armored knight sat up with a pounding headache. The knight proceeded to smash directly into someone else, who fell back with a tiny wail of pain. As it was, the headache suddenly became a mutual experience.

A voice above him said something in a harsh, grating language that reminded the soldier of Arabic in all of its worst moments.

"What?" demanded the soldier, glaring upward.

Standing over the knight was a woman with long blonde hair and an expression like a particularly irked hawk. Next to her was a small child, with his or her body carefully swathed in several lengths of cloth so that none of his features were visible other than his eyes. The woman folded her arms under her chest and nudged armored ribs with her boot. It was an unspoken command to get up.

"You heathen!" the soldier snapped, and the woman paused. The soldier abruptly realized that the woman stood more than eight inches taller than any woman in the Holy Land. And she didn't seem even slightly intimidated by armor and weapons. In fact, she was looking steadily more irritated as time passed.

The woman said something that the knight couldn't even begin to understand. While it was true that all ranked Crusaders had at least marginal training in Arabic, if only to make their demands clear to the people of Jerusalem, who usually didn't speak English or French like properly educated citizens. Whatever the strange woman was saying, it sounded like nothing the knight had ever heard before.

"Out of the way," the soldier snapped, trying to push past the disapproving glare, only to be stopped when the woman moved to the side, apparently of her own accord.

That was when the soldier finally had a chance to look down the hill. And up the other hill. And down toward the river, and toward the forest and the waterfall, and at that point it was extremely clear that wherever this place was, Jerusalem was probably not within three days' travel. It looked like a valley that had never even heard of deserts, and all of the mountains in the distance were capped with blindingly white snow.

The knight stared. This had to be a dream!

"I will not ask again," said the woman, and the soldier spun around in surprise. She was glaring. "How did you enter Gabilan?"

"Gabilan?" the soldier repeated, dumbfounded. There was no trace of an accent—she was speaking perfect English even though the knight was sure she was no Crusader. She didn't dress like one of the farmers who had been dragged along by the Pope's edict, either, and in any case they would never have told a woman to take up arms against the Muslims.

The woman's frown deepened. "The shields should have obliterated an outsider like you long before you arrived."

"I do not even know what you are talking about!" the soldier countered. "I do not know what Gabilan is, other than possibly I city I have never been to. The last thing I remember is entering my sleeping quarters for the night."

"Is that so?" the woman said doubtfully.

"I am a soldier of God," the knight said. "I will not lie."

"Which god?" said the child, still rubbing his head.

This was _definitely_ not the holy land.

The woman gave the knight a completely neutral look. "It would probably be best to continue this in a more reasonable setting. Come along, soldier of the gods. Unless you would have me call you by another name?"

The knight paused, seeing a man in white running up the hill to meet them. He was not heavily armed, but the woman's obvious dismissal of the sword seemed to speak of…alternate means of dealing with enemies. She could not be hiding a weapon in that dress, and her child was vulnerable. But she was so at ease that any experienced soldier would be on guard. No one was that calm in the face of cold steel.

Finally, the knight gave in and the helmet came off.

"What is your answer, lady knight?" the strange woman repeated.

"I am Maria Thorpe, steward to the master of the Knights Templar. Please take me to your leader, so we may discuss terms I may have violated," the knight said carefully.

"Well met, Maria Thorpe. I am the ruler of Gabilan." At Maria's look of disbelief, the woman's smile widened slightly. "I am Lady Lumina Shininglance, retired paladin and current high priestess of Bahamut. We will speak indoors."

* * *

**A/N:** I hope this partially makes up for the wait.

So...A poll in the reviews now.

Who should Altair meet up with first?

1. Maria.

2. Malik.

3. Random Assassin.

4. Random Templar.

5. Artemis Entreri.

6. Drizzt Do'Urden.

I'll be compiling results every time a new chapter is posted, so vote for your favorite!


	9. Do Not Touch

**Chapter Nine: Do Not Touch**

**A/N:** Why in the world is it so hard to write this?

Also, I'm sorry for the delay and hope you guys can forgive me. :(

* * *

According to Oceanus, they were less than a day's travel from their destination—Hokiide's tower, with Hokiide being a wizard of some renown despite living out in the wilderness. There didn't seem to be any reason for it—according to some of what Oceanus and Riyaz had mentioned (but mostly the former), wizards tended to be respected and even feared in cities, because of their power as well as their intelligence. When Altaïr asked about how it worked for priests and druids, however, neither of them answered.

Nightfall was, for lack of a better word, tense. They'd left the forest behind a few days ago, traveling out into grassland and scrub until they eventually reached the base of what wasn't so much a mountain range as a collection of particularly steep hills. Here, any unwary step could send one or all of them into a viper's nest or something equally terrible. When Oceanus stumbled on a rock and ended up sliding halfway into the next valley, where Altaïr would get his first look at giantkin.

The creatures were huge—three or four times the height of a man and wider by far, covered in hair and with faces that didn't so much resemble humans as a combination of human and ape, wielding clubs as thick as tree trunks.

Thankfully, there were only four of the creatures and Riyaz killed two with an opening volley of lightning, with Altaïr, Oceanus, and Ash splitting the last two between them, but the experience was a stark reminder of just how out of place the Assassin was in this world. Neither the priest nor the druid seemed to find anything odd about fighting monsters so much larger than they were—though, granted, Altaïr was sure that if Riyaz had transformed into a dragon the beasts would have run away in terror. For his part, Altaïr kept silent on the affair as long as his two companions did.

But at night, when it was his turn to take watch—with Ash, because Oceanus insisted that they should have paired watches to keep from being ambushed and apparently Ash counted as a partner—Altaïr wondered.

And when he was sure no one would be awake, and that there was no way the device would arouse suspicion in anyone nearby, he examined the Piece of Eden. Ash only pushed his nose into Altaïr's side whenever the Assassin tested the Piece, staring at the orb with his one good eye.

He wasn't sure exactly how Al Mualim had managed to use the orb the way he had. Or if the effects could be duplicated. But there should be a way… If the Piece of Eden was a weapon, there was no reason it would not function the same way in another's hand, assuming the same level of skill applied.

The orb glowed gently, taunting him in the dying firelight. Ash made a whining noise, still staring at the device so avidly that Altaïr could see the glow of the light reflected in his eye.

Oceanus rolled over, snoring softly.

Altaïr turned the Piece of Eden over in his hands, looking for something…a switch, a trigger of some sort? There had to be something Al Mualim had discovered to make the device work for him.

Then the orb's glow flickered.

That was all the warning he received before he felt blinding pain, nearly unbearable, as the Apple tore his mind wide open.

_Four thousand years._

_Three thousand._

_Two._

_Now._

_A man and a woman, running across an empty courtyard. Danger, everywhere. In, through the door, where a blacksmith's forge has been constructed ten times over, where men and women labor tirelessly among the vats of molten iron._

_Climbing, wildly, because the others will never turn against the masters though the temptation would be there. The masters were never far behind, or truly blind, because they lounged among the gardens in the sun, while their slaves toiled in the heat and dark below. A tower, scaled effortlessly._

_Sun, bright and harsh. A mountain in the distance, beautiful and powerful. The man nods, holding his hand out to his companion._

_And in hers, there is the Piece. The Apple._

_Another time, another place. Cities larger than Acre and Jerusalem, ringed by man-made rivers and studded with buildings the Christians favored, with a cross at the apex. A boy with a scar on his lip, screaming as bodies fell from a platform so terribly familiar—public hanging._

_A story of rage and pain, of chasing a hooded monster. Seeking, never certain, only driven by a need to _know_._

_A ring, stone and patterned, and an old man who hates and fears but knows _nothing_. Who wields an artifact of power—a staff, the Staff—that can bleed a man's soul. A fight. A victory, hollow and tired, but a vision._

_A woman of light. A prophecy for ears not his own._

_Another man, another time. Fear and hate, prisoners and secrets. Buildings so different, pillars of steel and clear glass. A man in white, demanding answers where none exist._

_A mind fragmented and terrified in a black void._

_An old man, seeking the past._

_A wild vision. The world, screaming in agony as the light tears it apart. The earth splits. The sea roars. The people die._

"Altaïr!"

_Blackness._

Altaïr found himself lying down, with all three of his companions nearby. Oceanus's hands pinned his shoulders to the ground and the priest looked like he'd just gotten the scare of his life. Riyaz had the Apple in hand. It had stopped glowing quite so brightly, now less like firelight and more like the dull reflected glow in Ash's eye.

"Altaïr, what happened?" Oceanus asked, releasing him and sitting back, staring. There was a note of concern in his voice. "You were…you looked possessed. Just for a moment, but…well, we were worried you would bite through your tongue and choke on blood."

"And what does this have to do with it?" Riyaz asked, tapping the side of the Piece of Eden gently. To the Assassin's surprise, it didn't activate.

"I do not know." Altaïr said, not even sure what he was trying to respond to. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. "The Piece of Eden…I should have known it would not give up its secrets so easily…"

"This thing?" Oceanus indicated the orb and Altaïr nodded. "Zahara just said it was a magical archive, not a weapon."

"Clearly, she lied or was misinformed." Riyaz said, his voice flat.

"It is more than that." Altaïr admitted. Al Mualim's betrayal was still fresh in his mind after everything. "I have seen it bend men's minds to the will of its user—dozens of them. It could…summon specters of a man's past, give them form, and set them on another." He wasn't quite sure how to explain the appearance of the Templar masters he'd killed, even if they had been assassins twisted into those forms. "And I once saw…a man…make copies of himself, all real to me even though they left no bodies behind."

Oceanus and Riyaz exchanged significant looks.

After a while, the priest said carefully, "Are you all right, here?" He tapped his forehead.

"I am not going mad." Altaïr replied crossly.

"That is not what I meant." Oceanus replied, equally annoyed. "Magic devices—the kind that can pull memories out of your mind, like this one—tend to leave scars _inside your head_."

At Altaïr's blank expression, Riyaz put in quietly, "If it did cause harm, you will know. Forcing a person's mind open…can destroy them. You were fortunate."

"Try not to do it again." Oceanus mumbled, looking away.

"You do not need to treat me like a child, either of you." Altaïr retorted, though he understood their worry. Al Mualim went mad, in a way. Mad with power, though, not descending into gibbering insanity like the lepers Altaïr had encountered. He sighed. "Though I understand."

"It is...a common problem, where we live." Oceanus explained with difficulty. "There are those that use magic to torture their enemies, and our village occasionally looks after those who survive."

For whatever odd reason, Altaïr imagined that their village would be a little like Masyaf. Assassins were usually born into the ranks, but many were adopted, or bought, and trained to be warriors. If a village could hold both Oceanus and Riyaz, along with whatever strange companions they could gather, it would have to be a uniquely tolerant place.

And Altaïr would rather get away from the topic of the Piece of Eden entirely. So, after tucking the item safely away in his pouch again, he said, "Tell me about this village. I may never see it, but…" He trailed off.

"In the morning, perhaps." Oceanus allowed after a moment. "We have a long walk ahead of us, and you seem to be well enough." He paused. "In the morning, I think we should also discuss what your trinket can do. I doubt ancient Mulhorandi texts have explained enough to us."

"Mulhorandi?" Altaïr asked.

Oceanus bit his lip, looking like he was wondering where to begin. "…People say that the ancestors of those who live in Mulhorand—a desert nation far from here—came from another world, in a burst of light. The Calishites' ancestors have a similar story, though they say their ancestors arrived as slaves to an efreet thousands of years ago."

"You think they could be from Earth?" Altaïr guessed. The very idea was mad, but there was always a grain of truth in the old tales. The Apple proved as much.

"Possibly. No one can know for sure. But we may find some clues, one way or another." Oceanus shrugged and went back to his bedroll to pack it away. "Also, your shift is over. Ash and I can keep watch from here."

Altaïr nodded shortly. The morning would be a long one, it seemed.

However, one thing bothered him. He'd barely jostled the Apple before it showed him those visions, giving him a headache in the process. But when Riyaz did nearly the same thing—in the same spot, no less—nothing happened. Perhaps it was because he was a druid, or a dragon, or any number of things. It would be something to think about, at least.

* * *

Keras blinked. "_Wait, Ro __**left**_?"

"_That's what the reports seem to say_," his mother replied idly from the other end of the scrying mirror connection. "_Granted, I got most of this second-hand from when Cirrus tried dropping in to visit Yttress. By all accounts, Yttress nearly took his head off_."

"_Great. Just great._" Keras grumbled. "_But I guess I can't blame him. Yttress might not be as bad as he's used to, but she's still a black dragon._"

"_Lumina probably should have remembered that when she asked him to become her apprentice_." Zahara said in a biting tone. "_She's always been like that_."

"_Lumina or Yttress?_" Keras asked.

"_Yttress. If you were two thousand years old, you'd probably have pretty much the same personality as you did when you were two hundred_." Zahara muttered. "_If anyone ever wants to point out a relic from a bygone age, just point them in her direction._"

"_Heh. So, anyway, what else seems to be going on? Snowball still kicking at last count?_"

Zahara nodded. "_He, Riyaz, and the assassin seem to be fine. Barring a few issues, anyway._"

"_What kind of issues are we talking about?_" Keras asked suspiciously.

"…_Forget I said anything._" Zahara said after a pause, and then the mirror went back to just showing his puzzled reflection.

"_That_ doesn't sound good." Keras muttered, turning away to go and find his bed. He usually didn't need that much sleep when he hadn't done anything all day, but now it was a matter of trying to overcome a very bad feeling about his friends' safety.

After a moment or two, Keras shrugged and made a mental note to shout at his mother the next time she called him, because he was sure that it would be right after something went horribly wrong.

* * *

Maria was not quite certain of what she was supposed to expect when the strange woman led her—under guard, of course—to a building half-buried in the hillside. Actually, no, it was as though the building was actually built to be like a molehill or a termite mound—there was nothing that indicated that the elegant arches and wave-like designs were anything but exactly the way they should have been. But why would anyone put a building halfway into a slope? Workers would have spent years digging out the site.

Still, they ascended the steps to the mysterious building without any ceremony. A young woman—brown hair, willowy build—bowed to Lady Shininglance as they passed, but that was all.

The darkness inside was lit by strange orbs of light, not torches, and the glow was steady throughout the stone halls. Suddenly, Maria wondered if she was being led into a mine of some sort, though there was no evidence of work being done anytime recently. But for what other purpose could there be structures in here?

Lady Shininglance, for her part, had merely scooped up the little boy and carried him through the halls, turning abruptly at one of the side passages. The man in white, introduced as Stratus, nudged Maria along the widest hallway without arguing that she should remove her weapons or armor.

Stratus said something unintelligible to her, walking slightly ahead of her and beckoning for her to follow. He seemed kind enough, though very fair and somehow combining white hair with a young face, but he also didn't seem to understand a word she was saying when she replied.

The hallway led straight to the heart of a massive complex, it seemed. When they reached an antechamber with a ceiling so high it had to be lit by a web of the orbs of light that stretched across the length of it, Stratus bowed and motioned for her to stay where she stood, at the door to a throne room. She did, nodding, and he disappeared into one of the other twelve hallways that led out of the room.

And not long after, Lady Shininglance arrived from a separate archway and walked calmly to the high-backed chair on the central platform—a throne in all but name. Her child was nowhere to be seen.

"You may approach," she said in a mild voice.

Maria did so, stopping at the edge of the raised platform. When the woman gestured for her to speak, Maria said, "You wished to speak to me inside, Lady. I have obeyed." Politeness was one way to avoid being skewered by enemy commanders, though not much of one, but Maria knew more based on her upbringing in England than anything.

Lady Shininglance nodded. After a moment, Maria realized with shock that the woman, rather than having light brown eyes like she had assumed, had the yellow eyes of a cat. They reflected light as clearly as any animal's. Her face had lines, indicating that she was older than forty at least, but the self-assured way she held herself and her lack of expression was making reading her more difficult.

Eventually, she spoke, "Maria Thorpe, Knight of God, how is it that you arrived in Gabilan?"

"I do not know." Maria replied, frowning. "Lady, I can only remember my commander ordering me to remain in Jerusalem while he went to speak to His Majesty. I was to hold the line, and I failed. The assassin pursuing my commander left in pursuit, but I do not know what became of either."

Lady Shininglance's expression shifted slightly, becoming marginally less harsh. "And this is all you remember?"

"Other than issuing orders to my troops, I only remember returning to my bedchamber later that night." Maria replied. "There was nothing out of the ordinary."

"…I understand." The woman sighed after a long moment. "I do not see you as a threat to my city, lady knight. I believe you."

That was…good? Maria wasn't quite assured, because there were so many unusual aspects of this place, but at least their ruler hadn't decided to have her executed for being a woman in a man's armor. In fact, no one here even seemed to care that she was a warrior. It was starting to worry her. This place was very different from home.

Lady Shininglance nodded to herself, apparently mulling over a decision regarding Maria. Then she snapped her fingers.

"You called, Lady?" Stratus said from the entrance of one of the side tunnels—again, not the one he had vanished into. How many side passages were there in this place? And…he could speak English? Since when?

"Further introductions are in order." Lady Shininglance said evenly. She turned her attention back to Maria. "This is Stratus, as you know, but he is the captain of the guard as well as my primary military advisor. He would be, were my territory larger, a general. Not unlike your commander, I believe."

Stratus bowed to acknowledge the compliment.

"You may ask him any question you wish regarding this place, or our people, but you will not stay in his home," she explained, nodding briefly at Stratus. Her gaze was very sharp. "For your safety and comfort, I have already made other arrangements."

"What are they, if I may be so bold?" Maria asked cautiously, looking between the two of them with some trepidation. Not that she wasn't relieved that she could stay as far from the man as possible, since he unnerved her, but there was something in the woman's expression that was worrisome, to say the least.

She smiled. Maria felt a chill go down her spine. "Unless you request a different host during your stay, you will find that my niece's home is prepared for you."

Niece? But…how exactly did this city's line of succession work? A woman like her should have a husband, or heirs. Her niece would have been married off. But by then, Stratus had already beckoned for her to follow him once again, and she did so without a backward glance.

"Is something troubling you, Lady Maria?" Stratus asked after they'd emerged into the sunlit world again.

Maria shook her head. "I simply do not understand yet."

"What is there to understand?" Stratus sounded curious, now.

"This…this city, this village, or whatever it may be called…why does Lady Shininglance rule it?" Maria asked, somewhat hesitant. "Is she regent?"

Stratus raised one eyebrow quizzically. "No. Lady Lumina was once bonded, yes, but her man has been dead for a very long time, and she has no blood heirs."

"In my home, a woman would have been married off again, or ruled in her eldest son's place." Maria tried to explain. "There are no women who rule alone."

Stratus's expression became blank. "I suppose Gabilan is out of your experience, then." He paused. "I think I need to explain, then."

"It would help." Maria said with a nod.

"Most kingdoms in the Realms have men as rulers." Stratus said after a moment. "And not all women have power. But in some places, like the Spine of the World—where we are now—the most pivotal aspect of ruling a kingdom is not being born male, but being powerful. A ruler here needs to be strong enough to lead an army into battle."

"My king—His Majesty King Richard I the Lionheart of England—he leads us in our crusade." Maria replied, more thinking aloud than anything. "He cannot lead the charge, but his wisdom guides us on the battlefield. My commander, Robert de Sable, was the one who worked in His Majesty's stead within the Muslim cities."

Stratus nodded. "That would be broadly the same idea…however, a truly powerful ruler _will_ lead the charge."

"But what if your leader dies?" Maria asked.

The man shrugged. "Then we get a new one." At Maria's stricken expression, he went on, "Lady Maria, most kingdoms choose their rulers based on blood. One family is blessed by a god, or perhaps just has a tendency to breed smart heirs." He waved a hand vaguely. "As strange as it may be to you, Lady Lumina does not rule Gabilan because she is the daughter of a chieftain or a king. She rules because she always has, and because she can slay _any_ foe, no matter how strong, in single combat."

"How long has this village been here?" Maria asked, still stunned.

"Six hundred years." Stratus replied, walking on ahead. "And while her son may be adopted for a reason, he will never succeed her."

"What? Why?"

"For one thing, he is a half-elf and thus too weak to lead a city like ours." Stratus said in a calm voice. His gray eyes were no longer reassuring. "For another, she will outlive him by thousands of years."

Maria decided not to ask why. The answer would undoubtedly be more gibberish.

She didn't speak again until they reached a modest two-story house in the middle of the village. It was unremarkable except for the fact that Stratus stopped there, rapping his knuckles against the wooden door. After a moment, it opened.

Standing there was a young blonde woman with gray eyes—fifteen or sixteen, perhaps older—who dressed in black lined with deep turquoise. Rather than having a skirt or dress or _something_, she wore a short, sleeveless tunic and, rather than breeches, her boots were long enough that the upper edge of one disappeared under her clothes. Her arms were bare except for a series of black bands and heavy leather gloves, one of which had the fingers cut off. And over the entire ensemble, she wore a high-collared, sleeveless coat that reached down to her ankles.

"Stratus? Who is this?" the girl asked.

"Lady Alena, this is Lady Maria. Your honored aunt has requested that you look after her for a time." Stratus bowed briefly to her.

Lady Alena looked at Maria, her eyes narrowed slightly. "I did not get any message about—"

At that moment, there was a squeaking sound from inside the house and Alena suddenly looked more annoyed. "Never mind. I was just informed. Out of curiosity, does my aunt expect me to act as our guest's guide for the duration of her stay?"

"Perhaps." Stratus allowed, looking sheepish for the first time since Maria had met him.

"In that case…" Alena sighed. "Go back to my aunt and tell her that I will do as asked, but on my terms."

"Very well, Lady Alena." Stratus bowed again and then took off in a blur of white, leaving Maria and Lady Alena standing on her doorstep.

Alena gave Maria a pitying look. Maria hated it. "Come inside. There should still be enough food and drink for two."

Inside the house was unusually warm, but also very dark. If Maria had to guess, she and Stratus had arrived just as Alena had been about to leave the house to go about her day. Though what could require such a…costume, Maria didn't know.

"Please, ask about this stupid outfit." Alena muttered after a minute or two, when she had placed cups on the kitchen table and re-lit most of the lamps in the room. She put a kettle on the fire, which had sprung back into life rather quickly, and moved to open the front windows. "Everyone else has."

"I did not mean to be rude." Maria replied, somewhat abashed. It wasn't kind of her to be cruel to a woman in her own home. That would be insulting her hostess's hospitality.

Alena gave a humorless laugh. "It is not your fault—this outfit is hideously impractical and gets caught on everything from rocks to trees. And I hate the color."

"Then why wear it?" Maria asked as Alena sat down at the table with her.

Alena smiled mischievously. "When you teach hand-to-hand fighting to a band of young idiots, sometimes the best way to show your skill and put them in line is to beat them with a deliberate handicap. In my case, loose and flowing clothing. For others, perhaps a hand tied behind their back."

"Is this because you are a woman?" Maria asked cautiously. Her own experiences with Robert de Sable had led to her being grudgingly accepted by the Templar order, though she had no doubt that without Robert her position was forfeit. Still, she felt that she was on more familiar ground here.

"Partially." Alena admitted, that faint smile still on her face. "We occasionally train troops from Silverymoon and its surrounding areas, and some of them believe that I only live and teach by the grace of my aunt's charity." She shook her head. "They are often surprised that I am not the delicate young maiden, prone to fainting and the vapors, like some stories say."

"I know the feeling." Maria said somewhat bitterly. "It is as if they think that a woman cannot take up arms at all." That assassin had been so _shocked_ when he found that he had chased a woman halfway across the city and not Robert de Sable. It had been rather funny, in a grim way. Otherwise, that day had been horrible.

Alena laughed again. "Therefore, it is our duty to do what we can in the face of their stupidity." She shrugged and turned back to Maria. "I…I apologize for my aunt and her lieutenant. They tend to be condescending to people they consider outsiders."

"It was no trouble." Maria murmured, though that was a lie. Coming to this strange place, with no apparent way back…it was too much. She still wasn't sure it was a dream, but only waking up would let her know for certain.

There was a long pause.

"…If you need it, there is a spare bed in that room." Alena said quietly, pointing toward a door made of oak. She pulled the kettle off the fire without touching the handle, meaning that she grasped it by the base and _wasn't burned_, and set the kettle in the washbasin. Then she retrieved a pinch of dried herbs from a jar on the countertop, putting some in each of the cups, and poured hot water over both. "Tea?"

"Is that what this is called?" Maria asked, accepting the cup. She didn't take a sip, though. Whatever this strange liquid was called, it was warm and smelled of herbs. "Thank you."

"It is no trouble for me." Alena replied. She looked thoughtful for a moment. "Also, if you want, you can come with me when I go to the demonstration. We have enough time that you could rest, eat, and bathe if you want to."

Didn't she know that baths were just a way to get sick later? Maria stared at her, but instead said, "Are there any other clothes I could wear?"

"You could choose one of my outfits." Alena said mildly, shrugging. "I might have to let a few seams out, but you are only a hand or so taller than me. Just ask."

"…Very well." And Maria would find some way to get back home. Maybe Robert wasn't alive anymore. Maybe he didn't need her. But she needed to be back in the Holy Land and doing something, because being a prisoner in a strange village in the middle of nowhere was not something she was looking forward to.

In the next few hours, she'd discover that she was even further from home than she ever thought before.

* * *

"I found something!"

In another time, another place, or possibly with other people, that phrase could have been an innocent remark. Not here or now.

Since the adventure in the Underdark, Raaze and Rime had returned to the surface world, to one of the few places the denizens of the Underdark usually didn't care to tunnel under. After all, there was almost nothing of interest in the Evermoors, aside from trolls. Sure, Nesme and Silverymoon were on opposite sides of the massive, hostile, troll-infested marsh, and Mithral Hall was rumored to be somewhere near Silverymoon, but the swamp remained one of the few areas that no one would wander into unless they wanted to die.

That made it a fairly convenient place to put a wizard's tower when one didn't particularly want to be found. Even more so once they'd combined all of their conjuring magic and created a palace out of a lone, towering stone structure. While their dear sorcerer friend was attempting to target the strange artifact he had interested them with, Raaze lounged in the cool evening air and made sport of the wildlife from the castle walls. There were a lot of burning trolls by the time Rime called out.

Raaze looked up from his current game, which involved trying to make six panicking trolls run around in a pattern. "Really, dearest Rime? Drag it over here so I can see what it is, too."

"It" turned out to be an armored figure flailing in Rime's grip. It only took her about thirty seconds to drag the man to Raaze's feet for inspection. If anyone had cared, they would have noticed that a drow should not have been able to achieve such a feat by any non-magical means, but neither Raaze nor Rime particularly cared about physics.

"This armor is old-fashioned." Rime complained, hoisting the man into the air as though he was made of straw. "See? There is not even any proper plating!"

"Unhand me, you monster!" the man screamed, lashing out with a gloved fist and trying to catch Rime in the eye.

Raaze, for his part, caught the blow aimed at Rime's face and idly crushed the man's hand in his grip. "So, the armor is not even worth selling?"

"Well, I suppose it could be used for scrap…" Rime said, almost inaudible over the man's screams. Then she dropped him on the ground, idly flicking a wrist in a somatic command so that the man was simultaneously silenced and bound by webbing conjured from thin air. "In any case, do you think we should keep him? It would be like having another pet."

"We had to dispose of our last good one." Raaze agreed, sounding thoughtful. "Though I doubt our current skeletal friend will like a distraction like this one."

"It is truly a pity that Mofke was so easily distracted by human failings before we got to him." Rime said, smiling. "Oh, I know that it was _my_ fault we had to put our last pet down, but I can keep this one alive! And if not, we can just turn him into a lich like Mofke."

"Speaking of, I wonder if he has found that artifact. Or you think that he needs more encouragement?" Raaze asked. He glanced down at the terrified, bound knight at their feet. "And do we really need another toy?"

"…Well, perhaps not." Rime admitted. "But this one fell from the sky!"

"Oh, really?" Raaze looked curious now. "Show me. Perhaps that will be the motivation our sorcerer skeleton needs."

"Right!"

If the hapless Templar had looked toward the tower, he would have seen a vivid green glow from the highest window. And if Mofke, the lich bound to the scrying stone, had managed to break free from his prison for even half a breath, he would have seen the world through the eyes of those who could see magic like light. As it was, all he could do was silently call for one of his tormentors—he'd found the artifact again.

But if he could have gotten free for only that long, he could have seen the silvery wall that divided one plane of existence from another.

And all of the holes in it.

* * *

Meanwhile, in the deserts south of Memnon, the Crystal Shard was being put to use by a band of dark elves. And one human assassin started to wonder if he should do something about it, and how.

And much further north, a certain drow ranger sat on the edge of a cliff overlooking the entrance to Mithral Hall, and watched the stars shift overhead.

* * *

**A/N:** Poll results so far!

"Who should Altair meet up with first?"

1. Maria.

2. Malik. (2)

3. Random Assassin.

4. Random Templar.

5. Artemis Entreri (and Jarlaxle). (1)

6. Drizzt Do'Urden. (3)

Remember, the poll won't be closed for a few more chapters!


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